The New Nation - Internet Edition

Labour and Employment Adviser Anwarul Iqbal yesterday urged knitwear manufacturers to establish labour-friendly factories and increase facilities for workers.

The Adviser said the government would provide all support to the setting up of labour-friendly factories.

Anwarul Iqbal was addressing a seminar on "export growth and compliance: the case of Bangladesh knitwear sector" at the Osmani Memorial Hall in the city. The seminar was organised by the Labour and Employment Ministry and BKMEA.

Iqbal stressed the need for introducing a rationing system for knitwear workers as the spiralling prices of commodities hit hard the low-income group people.

The government had earlier asked the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) to increase facilities for workers.

BKMEA president Fazlul Hoque said the association had decided to introduce a rationing system from next Monday. In the initial stage, the rationing system would function in Fatullah in Narayanganj and the BSCIC industrial area.

Hoque said the rice sale at reduced rate of Tk 25 per Kg among its workers would continue until the price comes within the buying capacity of the workers.

BKMEA would have to provide Tk10 as subsidy for each Kg of rice. Each worker would get four kg of rice a week from the BKMEA outlets, he informed.

He also said that BKMEA would revise worker wages in a couple of months.

One million people, 70 percent of them women, work in the knitwear sector under directly and five million others indirectly, said BKMEA vice president MA Baset.

Baset, who presented a paper on export growth, said the knitwear sector of Bangladesh grabbed the biggest pie of Bangladesh exports and had an average growth rate of 20 percent in the last 10 years.

The knitwear export earned the country $3.47 billion in the first eight months of the current fiscal year, he said.

Readymade garment contributed for $9.12 billion or 75.64 percent of the national export earnings in fiscal 2006-07 and $6.76 billion or 76.23 percent in the first eight months of the current fiscal year, Baset said.

However, president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers’ and Exporters Association (BGMEA) Anwar-ul Alam Chowdhury Parves told BBC yesterday that garment owners would not sell rice at concession rates among their workers.

Anwar-ul Alam Chowdhury said the factories of BKMEA are located only in Narayanganj, while BGMEA factories are scattered across the country. They have no logistic support to introduce the system in a vast area, he said.