Several hundred workers of the Tuba Group decided to continue their hunger strike and rejected the partly payment proposal the BGMEA put to them on Thursday. The workers have demanded full payment of their arrear salaries and bonuses for the month of May, June and July immediately at a time.
The aggrieved workers have not accepted the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturer and Exporter Association (BGMEA’s proposal, said Mosharefa Mishu, leader of the Garments Sramik Oikya Foram (GSOF), at
Hossain Market, Uttar Badda in the city, where the workers are on hunger strike.
In a statement before it, SM Mannan Kochi, Vice-President of the BGMEA, announced in a press briefing at BGMEA headquarters in Dhaka, that the workers’ arrear salaries and allowances and bonuses would be paid partly within next seven working days,
At least 38 workers have so far fallen sick. The workers and the employees of five factories under the Tuba Group started the hunger strike on the Eid Day on the sixth floor of the factory housed at Hossain Market in Uttar Badda in the capital. It still continues, sources said.
Most of them are seen either sitting or lying down on the floor receiving IV saline. Eight of the workers were admitted to local clinics with deteriorating condition, Sumi Akter, a sewing operator of the factory, told The New Nation.
They could not celebrate the Eid-ul-Fitr due to non-payment of their wages and bonuses because neither the Tuba Group owner nor the BGMEA took initiative to respond, Sumi said.
Over 1,600 workers of Tuba Group, which also owns the fire damaged Tazreen Fashions Limited, have vowed to return homes with their demands met as quickly as possible.
