Workers toiled 11 hrs daily in Jan: Study

Ready-made garment (RMG) workers spent an estimated 11 hours a day in the workplace this January which, according to a latest survey, is higher than usual.
Since the beginning of Covid-19, January 2022 was the busiest month for workers in Bangladesh as they spent 295 hours on average during 27 working days.
This is higher than usual, according to a study done by the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM) that collected survey data in January and February.
Excluding the one-hour lunch break, the factory hands worked 268 hours on average in January.
Female workers toiled 267 hours on average during the period in question while male workers worked 270 hours on average, excluding lunch break, it found.
The SANEM in collaboration with a US-based nonprofit, Microfinance Opportunities (MFO), is conducting a research project on the quality of life of garment workers in Bangladesh.
An estimated 1,300 selected garment workers are surveyed every week since April 2020 under the project 'Garment Worker Diaries'.
These workers are employed in factories spread across five main industrial areas of Bangladesh (Chittagong, Dhaka city, Gazipur, Narayanganj and Savar).
Three-quarters of the respondents are women, which roughly represents the composition of labour force in the RMG sector as a whole.
In the 24 working days of February, the workers spent 259 hours on average in the workplace.
Workers spent 235 hours on average in February, excluding lunch break.
Among them, females worked 234 hours on average and males 235 hours on average.
In both January and February, half of the surveyed workers worked more than the legally allowed 10 hours-eight regular hours and two overtime hours.
For their work in December, females got salary of Tk 12,000 and males Tk 12,500 on average in January.
Female workers got the same salary in February also, but their male counterparts got Tk 13,000 on average, a Tk 500 hike in the January amount, the survey found.
In February, 54 per cent of workers were paid through mobile financial services like bKash, Nagad and Rocket and 46 per cent were paid in cash.
The survey shows about 20 per cent reported that at least one member of their household was ill in February while the illness rate in January was 26 per cent.

munni_fe@yahoo.com