Bangladeshi garment workers blocked roads and attacked factories on Monday as protests over the level of a new minimum wage spilled into a fourth day. Around 10,000 workers in Fatullah, south of the capital Dhaka, pelted police with rocks as they demanded a minimum monthly wage of 5,000 taka (ising factories and shops and looting goods.'
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has urged workers to accept the pay hike, and deployed thousands of police in Dhaka's main manufacturing zones to prevent further protests. "The demand for a 5,000 taka monthly minimum pay is unrealistic," government labour secretary Nurul Haq told AFP on Monday, adding that all major unions have accepted the new pay rise.
He warned that continuing unrest would serve only to hurt the industry as a whole. But Mahbubur Rahman Ismail, head of one garment union, told AFP that the new minimum wage was "derisory". "The government is using brute force and threats of prosecution to compel some unions to accept the pay hike," he said. "The government has filed a series of cases against union leaders who are now on the run. But we shall continue protests unless the wages are raised to a level that ensures a decent standard living for millions of workers," he said.
According to Walid Hossain, spokesman for the Dhaka police, dozens of workers have been arrested in connection to the unrest, largely on charges of participating in violence, damaging factory property and arson. Two protest leaders have also been arrested for their roles in the unrest, Hossain said, adding that many prominent union leaders had gone into hiding. Garments accounted for 80 percent of Bangladesh's 16.20 billion dollars of annual exports last year. The country's 4,500 factories employ three million workers, some 85 percent of them women.
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