By Xinhua,
Dhaka : The Bangladeshi caretaker government is to take stern action from August 1 against owners of garment factories who failed to implement compliance issues like providing minimum wage to workers.
Fyzul Haque, a spokesman of the Commerce Ministry, said a meeting of the government’s committee on Social Compliance for Ready-made Garments (RMG) made the decision on Monday.
Commerce Adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman told reporters after the meeting that all concerned should remain alert and work together so that the garment sector should not face any labor unrest on the ground minimum wage issue.
The setting of the minimum wage at 1662.50 taka (25 U.S. dollars) follows months of unrest in the apparel sector in Bangladesh, which began in early 2006 and saw hundreds of factories vandalized and dozens torched by hundreds of thousands of angry workers.
Bangladesh exported garment items worth 9.27 billion U.S. dollars in last fiscal (from July 2006-June 2007). The figure accounts for some 76 percent of the country’s 12.18 billion U.S. dollars annual export.