The legally set minimum wage levels for tens of millions of workers in Bangladesh's industrial sectors keep workers below the internationally drawn poverty line.
The United Nation's Millennium Development Goals require that countries should achieve at least $2 daily [$60 monthly] income for all citizens.
But an analysis by New Age has found that 33 of the 42 established wage levels set by the Minimum Wage Board mean that it is not possible for workers to move above the poverty line.
The levels include the salary of $42 a month in the export-orientated apparel sector, $37 a month in the shrimp processing sector, and $50 a month in the pharmaceutical sector.
The level set by the board for workers in automobile workshops is only $27 a month, for jute mill workers it is $31 a month, in hotel and restaurants, the level is $24 a month and in the iron and foundry sector, it is $59 a month.
Labour leaders and rights activists said that although the industrial sectors had advanced significantly in recent years, neither employers nor the government properly thought through the crucial human perspective of proper living standards for the workers.
'We hear politicians and government officials often making speeches on the Millennium Development Goals but it is astonishing that minimum wage even in the largest industrial sector is much below the poverty line requirement of $2 a day,' Nazma Akter, a leader of apparel workers, said.
'Really, neither the employers nor the government here is sincere in uplifting the standards of living of the workers,' said Nazma, who represented workers in 2006's tripartite negotiation for revising minimum wage for apparel workers.
The wages set for workers in the more risky and hazardous sectors tend to be a little higher. The minimum wage of a worker in ship-breaking yards, where deaths and injuries of workers are common, is $64 a month, with workers in re-rolling mill drawing a similar amount monthly.
The Minimum Wage Board recently recommended that considering the risks relating to work in tanneries, the workers should receive $122 a month. The minimum wage in tanneries was last revised more than 17 years ago.
Abul Kalam Azad, general secretary of the Bangladesh Tannery Workers' Union, told New Age that some employers were opposing the introduction of this agreed amount and hindering the finalisation of this upward revision on minimum wages.'
Industry insiders admitted that tannery workers even in many Asian countries draw monthly between $300 and $500.
Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmed, director of the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies, thinks that the mission of the government and others to try and uplift the economic wealth of the country is praiseworthy but this will be worthless if millions of workers continue to live below the poverty line.
'The most important priority of the MDG strategies of Bangladesh should be eliminating working poverty,' he said.
Iktedar Ahmed, the immediate-past chairman of the Minimum Wage Board, pointed out that social awareness in Bangladesh regarding fair minimum wages of workers is very weak and that make scopes for employers to exploit workers.
Echoing BILS's Sultan, Iktedar said that the government and social stakeholders here should sensitize employers to the issue of 'working poverty' and oblige them to arrange wages to ensure good living standards of the workers.
'It should be on the national agenda to ensure that workers are paid adequately. This mission will have to be achieved before achieving the Millennium Development Goals.'
Source: New Age
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