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“The workers who have not received salaries in June, July and August are really in trouble.”

“It is good that the welfare of the workers is being looked into. We hope it would be implemented properly,” said Hossain Zillur Rahman, executive chairman of the Power and Participation Research Centre.

The economist said surveys showed that the government’s social protection schemes were mostly giving attention to formal sector workers. But 87 per cent of the country’s workforce lies outside the formal sector.

“The thinking about the informal sector workers is still weak. Now, there should be vigorous policy thinking about the informal sector.”

The informal sector is no longer a sea of unknown workers. There are specific occupations where workers can be identified, according to Rahman.

“We have to address the informal sector. Otherwise, there would be inequality within the working group.”

Tanvir A Mishuk, managing director of Nagad, a digital financial service arm of the postal division, said this was a timely initiative and the right approach to stand beside the employees who have already lost their jobs.

It is already proven that mobile financial services (MFS) are the trusted players to disburse the government’s funds that can ensure full transparency, he said.

“And I am quite sure that only through MFS platforms, the right person can get the support and no other channels can offer this type of cost-efficient service maintaining high transparency.”

The director-general of the labour department would lead an eight-member implementation committee.

It will include the additional director-general of the labour department, the additional inspector general of the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments and the chief accounts and finance officer of the labour ministry.

Representatives of the BGMEA, the BKMEA, LFMEAB and BFLLFEA and the EU will also be there.

A 10-member committee led by the labour secretary would monitor and evaluate the scheme. The factories under the four associations would prepare a primary list of the affected workers and bring relevant information under a management information system (MIS).

The information includes names of the workers, their addresses, national identification numbers, bank or mobile financial service account numbers and mobile phone numbers.

The factories would send the data to the associations. The association would forward the list to the labour department.

The labour department would verify the data and place it at a meeting of the implementation committee.

The list recommended by the implementation committee would be approved by the director-general of the labour department. A bill would be submitted to the Chief Accounts and Finance Office.

The chief accounts office would send the electronic payment transfer to the central bank, which would transfer the cash to the banking or MFS accounts of the beneficiaries.

Workers who were employed until February this year would be eligible for the support. Besides, the workers who tested positive for Covid-19, are suffering from other diseases or are unable to work are also eligible.

The finance ministry would scrutinise the list the same way it did in case of distributing the government’s support for 50 lakh families which were affected by the pandemic.

The government has distributed cash support among 35 lakh beneficiaries.

Nagad distributed Tk 324.47 crore among 12.9 lakh beneficiaries. Bkash channelled Tk 233.99 crore among 9.3 lakh beneficiaries, Rocket Tk 177.44 crore among 7.05 lakh recipients and SureCash Tk 120.79 crore among 4.8 lakh beneficiaries.

On the eve of Bangladesh embarking on a countrywide shutdown on March 26, the government announced a Tk 5,000-crore special package to pay the wages and allowances of export-oriented industries’ workers for three months starting from April.

As the fund was later found to be inadequate, the government released another Tk 2,500 crore from the bailout package rolled out for the large industries affected by the pandemic.