A cabinet member on Monday proposed formation of a wage board to increase workers’ wages in the apparel sector, last revised in 2013, as the government employees’ pay structures were hiked two years back.Proposing the government move for enhancing the readymade garment workers’ pays in the weekly cabinet meeting, state minister for labour Md Mujibul Haque suggested that the NGO Affairs Bureau should strengthen its oversight mechanism to monitor what the non-governmental organisations were doing with the funds they were receiving from foreign donors for training and other welfare activities of workers. The junior minister told the meeting that the RMG workers’ wages were supposed to be reviewed every five years and on that ground their pays should be revised in 2018, a minister told New Age.Commerce minister Tofail Ahmed picked up the labour issue in the cabinet meeting for discussion with prime minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair at her Tejgaon office.Tofail said each of the readymade garment workers was drawing a minimum Tk 8000 to Tk 9000 on an average a month now and so there was no labour unrest in the export-oriented industry, according to the minister.The minister said that it was mentioned in the meeting that NGOs sometimes instigated unrest in the labour-intensive apparel sector that employed around 44 lakh workers, most of them women. Differing with Tofail, shipping minister Shajahan Khan, also a labour leader in the transport sector, said there was a demand for enhancing RMG workers’ wages in the wake of increasing living costs. Mujibul said that the owners of RMG factories were positive about the pay hike. There are around 4,500 RMG units, mostly located in Dhaka and Chittagong. Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association has, meanwhile, requested the government to form a minimum wage board incorporating representatives from owners, workers against the backdrop of workers’ movement for pay hike and demands from national and international labour rights groups.‘Although the readymade garment sector has been passing through hard time, we have requested the government to form a minimum wage board so that no vested group can use the wage-related issues,’ BGMEA president Md Siddiqur Rahman told New Age last week. Following Rana Plaza building collapse in April 24, 2013 that killed more than 1,100 people, mostly garment workers, the government under pressure from national and international community took a measure to review the wages of the RMG workers.In December 2013, a minimum wage board set the lowest wage for garment workers at Tk 5,300 raised from Tk 3,000, which was set in July, 2010.Monday’s cabinet, however, gave final approval to the draft Gazipur Metropolitan Police Bill 2017 and the draft Rangpur Metropolitan Police Bill 2017, said cabinet secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam at a briefing at the secretariat He said the cabinet approved in principle both the drafts on December 7, 2015.The laws would be similar to that of Barsial and Sylhet metropolitan police, the cabinet secretary added. Currently, there are six metropolitan police headquarters — Dhaka Metropolitan Police, Chittagong Metropolitan Police, Khulna Metropolitan Police, Sylhet Metropolitan Police, Rajshahi Metropolitan Police and Barisal Metropolitan Police — in the country.
