At least three people were killed and dozens more injured when police in Bangladesh clashed with garment factory workers demanding better pay. Police used batons and tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters in Dhaka and Chittagong, BBC online reports Sunday.
The workers say wages have not gone up, even though rises were due last month.
Police tried to disperse protesters attacking factories and smashing vehicles in Chittagong Export Procession Zone (CEPZ) on Sunday. Almost all factories in the CEPZ are closed because of the protests.
Demonstrations on Saturday forced a South Korean company to shut down all its 11 factories in Dhaka.
Labour unions say many of the factories are not implementing the new salary scale announced by a government wage board in August this year.
From November, the factories should have been paying a wage of at least 3.000 taka (43 US dollar = 235-240 DKR) a month.
The wage should have risen rise from 1.662 taka (25 dollar) per month. Workers had demanded the rate, last raised in 2006, to be tripled to 5.000 taka a month.
Bangladesh makes clothes for Western brands such as Walmart, Tesco, H&M, Marks & Spencer, Zara and Carrefour.
The garments industry is the backbone of Bangladesh’s economy, earning about 12 billion dollar a year – nearly 80 per cent of the poor South Asian country’s total exports.
More than three million people, mostly women, work in the industry, BBC notes.
