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RMG FACTORIES
High price, low wage put workers in a fix
TAHIRA SHAMSI UTSA
Shanta Akhter, a 29-year-old garment worker, lives in a small room in the basement of a building in the capital’s Mirpur-7.
The 72sqft windowless room can fit only a small bed. Her clothes hang on a single hook, and cooking utensils are piled in a corner on the floor.
She shares this small space with Nahida, another garment worker.
“My overtime payment is irregular ... I’ve to often borrow money to buy essentials ... This month, I took a loan that amounts to my salary to repay previous loans. I am currently having to buy my daily necessities on credit.
“My daily meals include lentils and leafy vegetables. Meat is out of my reach,” she told The Daily Star.
Shanta’s salary is Tk 8,300. However, her monthly expenditures amount to Tk 9,000 – Tk 4,500 for house rent, Tk 3,000 for groceries, and Tk 1,500 for education expenses of her daughter, who lives in her village home.
As her expenses exceeded her monthly income, she now shares them with her roommate. Shanta now spends around 81 percent of her salary, while Nahida contributes 75 percent of hers for monthly expenditures of their shared living space.
Nahida, who earns Tk 11,000 per month, said, “My diabetes medicine, which I must buy every month, costs Tk 1,500. After other expenses, sometimes it becomes difficult for me to buy it.”
Their neighbour Hosna, also a garment worker, has not been able to work for a while as she is pregnant.
Near the end of her third trimester, she said, “My doctor suggested I have milk and eggs every day. As my husband and I both can’t afford to have milk and eggs, he gets them only for me.”
Hosna, when working, earns Tk 10,800 per month. Currently, her husband, another RMG worker, is the lone earner with an income of Tk 10,200.
The couple’s monthly expenditure includes Tk 6,000 for rent, Tk 400 for electricity, Tk 500 for internet, and Tk 8,000 for groceries – around 70 percent of their joint earnings.
In 2018, the government raised the minimum monthly wage for garment workers to Tk 8,000 from Tk 5,300.
This includes Tk 4,100 as basic wage, Tk 2,050 for house rent, Tk 600 medical allowance, Tk 350 for conveyance, and Tk 900 for food.
The Daily Star spoke to 29 RMG workers and found that 48 percent of their average monthly salary of Tk 9,296 is spent on rent (about Tk 4,507).
A 2023 report by the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA) highlighted that a working person’s monthly “living wage” should be at least Tk 51,994.51 to be able to support a family.
Surveying families of 300 RMG workers from 63 factories, AFWA found one family’s monthly income to be Tk 24,137 – less than half of what it would need for food and other expenditures.
The Centre for Policy Dialogue in 2022 calculated the average monthly cost for a family of four with a “regular diet” to be Tk 21,385. For a “compromised diet”, eliminating animal proteins, the cost stands at Tk 8,016.
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