Bangladesh is reopening its garment factories that supply some of the world’s biggest clothing brands, raising concerns that workers are being put at risk to help the country reboot its economy.
The world’s second-largest exporter of clothes, whose 4,500 factories supply retailers such as Walmart and Marks and Spencer, has reported just 6,000 cases out of a population of 170m. But critics say testing has been low and warn that many of the coronavirus hotspots are in the garment industry districts on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital.
The sector is a backbone of Bangladesh’s economy and has been pummelled by the country’s lockdown measures at a time when it is also suffering in Europe and North America. The industry is worth $34bn, contributes more than 80 per cent to the country’s export revenue and represents about 13 per cent of gross domestic product.
Since March, however, more than $3.5bn worth of clothing orders have been cancelled, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.
This squeeze combined with a decline in remittance income from overseas workers, which has fallen by 22 per cent, is threatening the country’s record of uninterrupted economic growth of more than 5 per cent annually since 2005.
“It isn’t just a disaster for us. It’s a disaster for Bangladesh,” Rubana Huq, president of the BGMEA, told the Financial Times.
But as orders have slowly started to increase — particularly from buyers in Asian markets that are starting to reopen — manufacturers are under pressure to meet demand. “If we don’t start up again, retailers will move to China or Vietnam or Cambodia. It’s a fickle business,” said one factory owner.
The impact of the closures on the country’s 4.1m garment-sector workers, who earn as little as $95 a month, has been severe. “We can’t be waiting on relief,” said Monira Akhtar, a 40-year-old garment worker. “Who knows when we will get any? We need to be able to work.”
Since the start of April, thousands of workers have defied lockdown orders to protest on the streets of Dhaka for unpaid wages.
The government offered up $590m in low-interest loans for export industries to pay employees’ salaries, but this has not been distributed.
Some 150,000 workers are still waiting to be paid, according to government figures, although labour activists believe the true figure is much higher.
The BGMEA has staggered the factories’ reopening and issued safety guidelines for owners, including social distancing advice and personal protection equipment for employees.
Some factories are adhering to the guidelines and a few have even taken them a step further: Shakhawat Hossain, chairman of Paramount Textile, whose clients include Hennes & Mauritz and Uniqlo, has hired doctors and set up a clinic for workers at his factory.
Another factory owner who declined to be named said: “We want factories to open but after first managing the risk, and that is not happening.”
Yet there are fears that many manufacturers will not follow the advice, because it will be both “difficult and costly”, said Alexander Kohnstamm, executive director of Fair Wear Foundation, a non-governmental organisation.
But, he added, the pressure on labourers will not abate. “Workers need to go to work, or else [they will have] no food or rent,” he said. “But going to work may well cost them their lives.”
