The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) will provide food ration to the workers of the garment industries from the first Ramzan.

"The rationing system will continue throughout the holy month. We will try to fulfil the requirement whatever the volume is," BGMEA president Anwar Ul Chowdhury (Parvez) told reporters at a press briefing yesterday at his office.

He said each garment factory worker would get 3.7 kg of rice at Tk 100, 500 gm of lentil at Tk 40 and 400 gm of chickpea at Tk 20. Only ID card holders would get the benefit once a week from 11:00am to 4:00pm.

The three items will be distributed from 11 centres, nine in Dhaka and two in Chittagong.

The centres in Dhaka are Malibagh Health Centre (Saturday to

Thursday), Narayanganj Health Centre (Wednesday to Friday), Postgola

Health Centre (Saturday to Thursday), Mirpur Health Centre (Tuesday to Thursday), Mohammadpur Health Centre (Saturday to Monday), Gulshan

Health Centre (Sunday to Friday), Uttara Health Centre (Monday to Wednesday), Dilon Tower, Gazipur road crossings (Saturday to Monday) and Konabari Health Centre (Saturday to Monday).

The rationing of the essentials is to help ease the burden of soaring commodity price to the poor low paid garment workers. At the press conference the BGMEA president blamed the Government for the recent unrest in the garment sector, as the Government is "reluctant" to bring the anarchists to book.

"So far, no step has been taken from the Government side to punish the offenders and even there is no press note in this regard," Parvez said.

The president of the apex garment body said these days doing business has become tougher due to the deteriorating law and order situation.

"If such anarchic situation is allowed to go on, I fear, many factories might not be able to disburse the salaries of their workers before Eid," he apprehended.

About their postponed movement against the perpetrators of the unrest, he said, "Already, we have had meetings with the Home, Commerce and Labour Advisers' in this regard. But we will not give too much time, we might declare our programme next week," Parvez said.

He mentioned that the target of the recent unrest was the knitwear factories where the salaries are relatively higher. "Sweater factory owners are mentally ready to shut down their factories, if such activities continue to take place," the BGMEA president told journalists.

He said many factory owners told him to let the Government take over the factories and run those. "We are on the verge of ruining this robust sector," he said blaming the Government for its reluctance to protect it from the hands of unruly people.

"If a stable Government is the number one priority for a strong economy, then the growth of this sector is another priority for the country's economic growth," Parvez said.