Deutsche Welle :
While Bangladesh is famous for its apparel items around the world, many Bangladeshi entrepreneurs are setting up factories in Greece in order to take its fame to new heights.
Among them, there is Nurul Amin Dewan, who moved to Greece some 27 years ago.
After working several jobs, he devised the idea to set up a clothing factory named “Feema Fashions” in Greece’s capital Athens.
“I came to Greece 27 years ago. The factory is the result of my hard work,” he told Deutsche Welle.
Nurul Amin’s factory employs around 150 workers and most of them are Bangladeshis.
However, he is not the only Bangladeshi expatriate in Greece who has set up a garment factory.
There are a number of small and medium-sized apparel factories owned by Bangladeshi, and most of them also employ people from Bangladesh.
Nurul Amin Dewan told Deutsche Welle that many of the European buyers used to work in China or Vietnam earlier, and now they want to buy garments from these (Bangladeshi) factories in Greece.
According to him, there is a shortage of some 12,000 workers in garment factories in Greece at the moment.
Meanwhile, the establishment of such factories also created an additional opportunity for Bangladeshis, who went to Greece to work in the agricultural sector.
Due to the seasonal nature of the industry, the workers join can join the garment factories when there is no work in the fields.
Moreover, factories pay more than the other sectors, reports Deutsche Welle.
Mohammad Asif, a Bangladeshi expatriate, who has been living in
Greece for seven years, is currently working in Nurul Amin’s garment factory.
He said he works a 12-hour shift, and that pays him over Tk1,00,000.
Besides, Asif said he needs Tk30,000-40,000 to live comfortably in Greece, so he saves up the rest of his salary.
The Greek Parliament recently approved an agreement signed between Bangladesh and Greece to pave the way for recruiting 4,000 agriculture-based workers annually.
In February 2022, Greece and Bangladesh signed a deal for Greece to employ 4,000 Bangladeshi workers annually.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh has maintained its growth momentum in exporting apparel items to the US, the biggest single destination of readymade garment manufacturers, in the first half (January-June) of 2022, securing the position of the third largest exporter to the destination.
According to the latest data from the Commerce Department’s Office of Textiles and Apparel (Otexa), Bangladeshi exporters shipped apparel items worth $5.01 billion, fetching a growth of 60.3%, in the first six months of the current calendar year.
Bangladesh had previously exported RMG goods worth $3.13 billion to the US in the same period of 2021.
