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Demo for Pay Hike

50 RMG workers hurt in joint forces action

Staff Correspondent
Over 50 workers of a garment factory at Shreepur in Gazipur were injured yesterday when members of the joint forces, Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) and police fired gunshots and teargas shells and charged truncheons on them.
The law enforcers went into action to disperse the agitating workers who blockaded the Dhaka-Mymensingh Highway for over three hours demanding pay hike.
Witnesses said the angry workers of Reedisha Knitex Ltd located at Nayanpur of Shreepur upazila also pelted brickbats and stones at the law enforcers.
Earlier, the workers ransacked the factory building and attacked the staffers.
Factory authorities alleged that at least 15 of their staff were wounded in the attacks.
Sources said at 1:00pm during lunch break, over 5,000 workers of the factory staged a demonstration inside the factory to press home their demand for hiking salaries. They started ransacking the factory as their officials did not respond to their demand. When the factory staff tried to resist them the workers swooped on them.
The workers came down on the street at about 2:30pm and blockaded the Dhaka-Mymensingh FROM PAGE 1
Highway. Several hundred vehicles got stranded on the busy road.
The workers lay down on the road and chanted slogans for three hours before over 300 law enforcers rushed to the spot and asked the agitating workers to remove the blockade.
The law enforces also asked the factory authorities to assure die workers of increasing their salaries but none of them responded.
At about 6:00pm die law enforcers went into action firing over 50 gunshots and charging truncheon to disperse the workers.
Many injured workers were rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital while a few others to different local hospitals and clinics.
Gazipur Superintendent of Police Abdul Baten told The Daily Star that the law personnel were forced to go into action as the workers did not pay any heed to their request for freeing the highway.
'We requested both the factory authorities and the workers but none of them gave any response. If the factory authorities responded, such an untoward incident would not have occurred,’ he said.
MA Khayer, director (corporate affairs) of the factory, meanwhile, termed the workers' demands "illegal’. In a press release, he claimed that the factory has been providing its workers with aD the facilities fixed by Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA).