Wage payment of the country's readymade garment (RMG) workers will be digitised with introducing 'e-wallet' shortly, aiming to promote financial inclusion, and ensure transparency and workers' financial benefits.
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the ICT ministry in this regard tomorrow (Thursday).
BGMEA president Dr Rubana Huq made the disclosure at an event organised by International Finance Corporation (IFC) at a city hotel on Tuesday.
The event was to establish the business case for digital wage payments using mobile financial services in the RMG sector and launch a series of resources for enabling garment factories to transition from cash to mobile-based wage payments for their workers.
"The digital wallet will provide a vendor-neutral platform for wage digitisation and wage transactions," the BGMEA president said, terming wage digitisation a priority and necessity.
Garment workers will receive their festival allowance of next Eid-ul-Azha through the system, she said. At least the 35 directors of the BGMEA board will initially introduce the system before the Eid.
The issue is how the system is expanded and adopted by the factory owners, she said, adding that the main challenge is to implement the wage digitisation process in all garment factories.
Ms Huq called on all mobile financial service (MFS) providers, including bKash, to join the 'e-Wallet for RMG workers platform'.
Speaking at the event Bangladesh Bank's Deputy General Manager Masuma Sultana said: "Bangladesh Bank has worked tirelessly to ensure that the financial sector expands inclusively to reach underserved segments, such as women. IFC has been a long-standing partner in supporting us to achieve this goal, and the effort to financially empower female garment workers is commendable."
Specialised tools will allow MFS providers to expand the range of digital payments for garment workers and ensure that the RMG sector can take the initiative forward. It is part of the joint initiative of IFC and Bangladesh Bank to financially include women through MFS adoption.
Integrated into global supply chains and contributing over 80 per cent of the country's export earnings, 81 per cent of largest female workforce are unbanked, said IFC consultant Takreem Riwan Siddiqui while presenting his keynote paper.
About 90 per cent of RMG factories paid wages in cash in 2016 which is a missed opportunity for both the financial and RMG sectors, he said.
Awareness of the value proposition among factories, demonstration cases and analytics on the business case for factories, digitisation in the factory ecosystem, financial literacy and awareness on accounts among workers, difficulty in covering fixed costs incurred by MFS providers and availability of national identity among workers are among the major challenges, he said, explaining IFC's support for wage digitisation.
IFC acting country manager for Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal Nuzhat Anwar and senior financial sector specialist Ananya Wahid Kader, bKash chief commercial officer Mizanur Rashid, Marks and Spencer country manager of Bangladesh and Myanmar Shwapna Bhowmick, Stylecraft Ltd director Sharif Almas Rahman and ABA Group chairman Md Sajjadur Rahman Mridha, among others, were present at the meeting.
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