RMG owners benefit most from coronavirus stimulus: TIB

During the pandemic, RMG owners have enjoyed unilateral benefits from the handful of incentives announced by the government to weather the coronavirus fallout, says Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB).

Most incentives are given to the factory owners to deal with the business crisis – about 84 percent or Tk 52,800 crore of the incentives paid to address the business interests of the factory owners, according to the report on the RMG sector in Covid-19 released by TIB in Dhaka on Wednesday.

Some 21,000 workers in 64 factories which have taken incentive have not received their salaries and allowances due to announcement of factory lay-off and dismissed workers at the one set of the COVID-19 crisis, it said.

About 20 percent of the garment workers who worked for less than a year did not receive any compensation during the Covid-19 crisis. Moreover, in most cases during the Covid-19 epidemic workers have been dismissed in violation of labour law.

Though as of April- July, the estimated salary and allowance of ready-made garment workers was around Tk12,692 crores, the incentive amount in this package paid by the government was Tk9,188 crores, which is 27.6 percent less than the requirement. As a result, about 42.02 percent (about 14 lakh) of the total workers working in the ready-made garment sector did not receive or be deprived of government incentives, said the report.

It said large factories got priority for receiving incentive funds. “In some cases, large factory owners have been accused of using political influence and lobbying for getting incentives. Moreover, it has been spent more than a month to receive the money by factories due to the procedural complexity of the refund from the banks. As a result, the workers did not receive their salaries and allowances on time and were living in inhuman conditions during the crisis.”

As of September, a total of 1,904 factories had been laid-off and about 60,000 to 65,000 workers had been dismissed, said the report.

In some cases, at the early stage of Covid-19 crisis usually grouped workers were dismissed, but a small number of regular dismissing continued later, it said adding that there have been allegations against the owners by creating panic of dismissing factories, the workers forced to work with less salary and work in overtime without payment along with not to pay stipulated payment of wages to dismissed workers.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association instructed factory owners to send sick workers to the hospital at the expense of the owners and to set up separate isolation centres for the workers at the factory's premises or at a nearby private hospital.

“But most of the ready-made garment factory owners did not provide separate isolation centres for the workers. In some cases, workers with coronavirus or symptoms have been fired instead of being given general leave, and in some factories, workers have acquired general leave without salary,” said the TIB.