Barapukuria coalminers end strike after 22pc wage hike

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M Azizur Rahman
Barapukuria coalminers called off their strike after five days on Saturday, freeing some 700 people including 270 Chinese confined in the mine complex, after the authorities hiked their wages by 22 per cent, officials said.
Some 1,100 miners at the country's lone operational coalmine had enforced the strike since Monday, locking up the Chinese and some 400 officials and their families in the mine's residential quarters in one of the worst industrial strikes in the country's recent history.
They ended the strike Monday noon after successful talks with the state-owned coalmine authorities, Chinese contractor of the mine, the CMC-XMC Consortium, and local government administration.
"The coalminers have joined their work today and coal extraction started again from the mine," managing director of Barapukuria Coal Mining Company Limited (BCMCL) Mohammad Kamruzzaman told the FE.
The workers who stubbornly rejected high profile attempts to end their strike finally agreed with a 22 per cent wage hike, with a miner's minimum daily payment rising to Tk170 from Tk 140 and maximum to Tk 310 from Tk 254.
Two state ministers were sent to the coal mine to negotiate with the striking workers after the strike turned deadly, with angry miners assaulting officials and looting some of their houses.
Their daylong talks on Thursday ended in failure, further angering the workers who blocked roads and fell trees on railway tracks to cut the mine off the rest of the country.
Worried that the strike could pose security threat to the 277 Chinese workers, the government deployed several hundred police and Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) outside the mine compound.
"The ordeal of the Chinese and the officials has sent a negative signal to the country's foreign investors," Petrobangla chairman Hossain Monsur who accompanied the two ministers during the talks said.
"The miners have every right to enforce strike, but they don't have the right to create anarchy and attack officials. The officials and their families passed the days in panic and with little food," he said.
The strikers only allowed baby food inside following intervention by the law enforcing agencies, he added.
Officials said failure by the Chinese contractor, CMC-XMC Consortium, to implement a last year's agreement with the miners led to the strike, fuelling resentment among the workers.