Readymade garments workers in Dhaka’s Pallabi have called off their protest demanding minimum wages among many other things after police assurances.
“The workers have been protesting since morning demanding fair wages,” Pallabi police Inspector Imranul Hassan Prince told Bangla Tribune.
He added that they left the streets after the police assured them that they will keep an eye on the whether the workers are getting paid according to the wage board.
Prince said that the factory owners themselves spoke to the workers after which they left the streets in Pallabi.
On Tuesday (Jan 7) Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi and State Minister for Labour Munnujan Sufian held a meeting with the garment workers and owners at the Department of Labour.
Apparel workers alleged that the monthly wage in the seventh grade increased to Tk 8,000 from Tk 5,300 as per the latest gazette published by the government last year. But, the salary of the workers in other grades did not increase at the same rate.
The salary hike for the entry-level workers was more than that of their senior operators, who have been working for more than seven to eight years.
The new wage has been effective from Dec 1. Major disparity in the salary hike was noticed in the third and fourth grades as their salaries were not raised like that of entry-level workers.
In most of the grades, other than the seventh, only Tk 500 was raised in the new salary structure, whereas an entry-level worker's salary had increased by Tk 2,700 at one go.
During the meeting, a committee was formed to address the issue and the government has assured that the issue will be resolved by January.

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