Govt to constitute new committee to deal with labour issues

16 Dec '10

2 min read

Begum Monnujan Sufian, the State Minister for Labour and Employment, recently stated that the government intends to constitute a tripartite steering committee to deal with the labour strife in the garment industry and to keep an eye on the implementation of the new wage structure.

She was talking to the heads of the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufactures and Exporters Association (BKMEA), Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) and labour unions during a meeting with them at the BGMEA's Dhaka office.

Several members including various Ministerial representatives like that from the Labour and Finance Ministry along with representatives of BGMEA, BKMEA, wage board and other workers' unions will together constitute the committee, she said.

The Minister advised the workers to file their complaints regarding wage dissatisfaction or any other issue to the committee in writing.

The workers' leaders, while speaking on the recent labour strife in garment factories in Dhaka and Chittagong, said that the issue here was not regarding the payment of minimum wage of Tk 3,000 as specified under the new wage structure, but regarding the inequality in the pay of the junior and senior workers.

These workers' leaders even placed a demand for constituting a separate cell in each of the factories to take care of all the wage related issues.

Meanwhile, the Minister urged the workers' leaders to assist the implementation of the new wage structure.

Among those who spoke at the meeting were BGMEA President Abdus Salam Murshedy, Shamima Nasrin, a workers' leader and BKMEA President M Hatem.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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