Bangladesh to raise garment workers' minimum wages: minister

Bangladesh has set up a panel to raise the minimum wage for more than three million garment workers, a minister said today, after a series of disasters highlighted the poor conditions they endure.
"We've set up a minimum wage board for the garment sector. We did it in view of the workers' demand to hike their salaries," textile minister Abdul Latif Siddique told AFP.
A typical Bangladeshi garment worker takes home less than USD 40 a month, a wage that Pope Francis has condemned as akin to slave labour.
The panel will include union representatives as well as factory owners, Siddique added.

"There is no doubt the salaries will be hiked," he said, adding that the government had also taken the rising cost of living into account before arriving at a decision.
The decision came as the death toll from the country's worst industrial disaster climbed to 1,126, 19 days after a nine-storey garment factory complex in a suburb of Dhaka caved in and buried thousands of workers.
The government announced a high-level panel last week to inspect thousands of garment factories for building flaws, amid fears that Western labels would turn their backs on Bangladesh after a series of deadly accidents hit the sector.

Last Thursday a garment factory fire in Dhaka killed eight people. Another fire last November killed 111 garment workers, the worst blaze in the history of the country's textile industry.