B'desh garment workers' protest low wages, loot firearms

Nearly 150 people were injured today when thousands of angry garment workers in Bangladesh clashed with police, looted firearms and vandalised factories, demanding a minimum monthly wage of USD 100 per month.
The authorities of almost all the readymade garment factories in Gazipur decided to suspend production at their units for today having suffered from the unrest, Mosharraf Hossain, assistant superintendent of Gazipur Industrial Police, said.
Over 140 hurt people, including six police personnel, were injured in Gazipur and Savar, when aggrieved workers clashed with police.
According to reports, workers of different factories gathered outside 'Colossuses Apparels' in Gazipur and vandalised the factory, attacking a paramilitary camp.

The workers looted 8 rifles and 135 round of ammunition and set fire to them in front of the factory. Four of the looted rifles were recovered later.
Several vehicles were damaged as the workers came out on the streets demanding a minimum wage of USD 100 per month. That forced managements of hundreds of factories in Gazipur, Savar and capital Dhaka to close down for the day.

On Saturday, authorities ordered temporary shutdown of nearly 300 garment factories as several thousand workers took to the streets demanding higher wages.
Officials said the management of garment factories shut production at suburban Gazipur and Savar areas on the outskirts of Dhaka after over 10,000 workers came out of the units and blocked transport movement on Dhaka-Tangail Highway.

The workers unions have been demanding the minimum monthly wage of USD 100 or 8,114 Takas while the factory owners said they could raise the amount to as high as 3,600 Takas or 20 per cent due to gloomy global economic conditions.
Bangladesh is the world's second-largest garment exporter with over 4,500 factories which account for nearly 80 per cent of the country's USD 27-billion annual exports paying a worker the minimum wage of USD 38 a month.
Widespread protests for wage hikes in 2006 and 2010 led to deadly clashes, leaving dozens of workers dead and hundreds of factories vandalised but this protest is the first major one since the deadly collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in April that killed at least 1,127 workers.