Bangladesh garment workers block roads

Thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers have been picketing factories and blocking roads, as they continue to demand a promised pay rise.
BBC, 13 December 2010

Photo caption: The unrest came a day after demonstrations shut down factories in southern Bangladesh

More than 4,000 workers blocked a main highway in the manufacturing northern district of Gazipur and demonstrated outside two plants near Dhaka.

On Sunday, three people died and scores were injured in the protests.

The unrest has paralysed the country's $15bn garment industry, which accounts for 80% of annual export earnings.

More than three million people, most of them women, work in Bangladesh's garment factories, which make clothes for major Western brands, including Wal-Mart, Marks & Spencer and Carrefour.

The workers say wages have not gone up, even though rises were due last month.

"They have blocked the main highway linking Dhaka to the north of the country," Khandaker Shafiqul Alam, police inspector at Gazipur, told news agency AFP on Monday.

The authorities later managed to clear the road without violence, although the protesters remained on either side of the route and the situation was said to be tense.

On Sunday, police used batons and tear gas to disperse protesters in Dhaka and the port city of Chittagong.

Garment workers attacked factories and smashed vehicles in the Chittagong Export Procession Zone.

Almost all factories in the zone have now re-opened after the protests, officials said.

Labour unions say many of the factories are not implementing the new salary scale announced by a government wage board earlier this year.

From November, the factories should have been paying a wage of at least $43 (£27) a month.

Around Dhaka, workers in some factories have been protesting for a number of days, demanding increased pay.

Pay and working conditions have long been a source of concern in the country.

URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11980438