State minister for labour Md Mujibul Haque on Sunday said that the proposed drafts of amendments to the labour law would be placed before the cabinet by mid August with an aim to turn the drafts into law by the next parliamentary session scheduled for September.‘We have almost finalised the draft of amendments to the labour law and today we held a meeting with the stakeholders to get their final opinion on the issue,’ the state minister told New Age after the 60th meeting of Tripartite Consultative Council held at Hotel Purbani in the capital.In the meeting, Mujibul Haque sought opinions, if any, from the owners and workers’ representatives to prepare the final draft to place before the cabinet.Labour leaders once again raised their demand for six-month maternity leave for the private sector workers like the public sector workers.They also demanded that ‘maternity benefit’ must be replaced with ‘maternity leave’ in the law, detailing the benefits workers would get during the maternity leave.Labour leaders in the meeting wanted to know the government decision on the issues including membership threshold for trade union registration and compensation amount as workers and owners representatives had failed to reach any consensus on the issues.Declining to disclose the government decision on the issues the state minister said that it would not be possible to disclose the decision before approving the draft in the cabinet.He, however, said that the government decided in principle to reduce the membership threshold for trade union registration to 20 per cent from existing 30 per cent.Labour secretary Afroza Khan, Bangladesh Employers Federation president Qumran T Rahman, former BEF president M Anis Ud Dowla, Jatiya Sramik League president Abdus Shukkur Mahmud and executive president Fazlul Haque Montu, Bangladesh Trade Union Centre general secretary Wajed-ul Islam Khan and Bangladesh Trade Union Sangha general secretary Chowdhury Ashikul Alam, among others, attended the meeting.According to the meeting sources, Mujibul said that the draft amendment would be placed to the cabinet within the short time as the government would place the amendment bill before the parliament in September session.‘We have only two months to turn the draft of amendment to the labour law into a law,’ the state minister said in the meeting.The government made commitment at the fourth review meeting of the Sustainability Compact held at Brussels on June 25 that drafts of amendments to the labour law and export processing zones law would turn into laws by September this year. The government also made the same commitment to the international Labour Conference held in Geneva in June this year.
