Factories open in port city with lax health insurance and safety measures
With great trepidation and no other choice, about 1.5 lakh employees in Chattogram have joined their workstation from April 26.
And the factories, and there are more than 205 of these, have not devote government-directed health and safety precautions to safeguard them from contracting COVID-19, the personnel said.
They are wearing face masks out of their own sense of self-preservation but the factory owners are neither providing hand gloves, hand sanitisers, hand washing facilities according to medical and safety rules nor ensuring social distancing.
The best number of factories are open in the Chittagong Export Processing Zone (CEPZ): 98. Besides, 35 more factories have already been opened in the Karnafuli EPZ and Korean EPZ area, in line with the export processing zone authorities. Aside from garment, the factories manufacture export-oriented sports, electronics, cosmetics, shoes, and pharmaceutical products.
Maintaining social distance isn't possible among so many workers, Khurshid Alam, general manager of CEPZ told The Daily Star.
The workers' temperatures are checked at entry points of every factory. If anyone is available with high temperature, he/she is sent back, Alam said.
But Shahana Begum, a sewing machine operator in a factory in CEPZ, isn't too confident about the measures in saving her from contracting COVID-19.
"The factory authority has checked if we were wearing masks whenever we enter. However the temperature gun isn't working properly and there is absolutely no location to wash hands save for at mealtimes," she said.
None of the decisions taken by the government and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association is labour-friendly, said Hasan Maruf Rumee, vice-president of Bangladesh Garments Sanghati Samity.
About one lakh personnel enter the CEPZ each day through a gate.
"It really is impossible to enter here while maintaining social distance."
If employees enter CEPZ through four separate rows, about 25,000 employees will queue up in each row. And if the personnel maintain a distance of three meters among themselves, then your amount of each line will be 75 kilometre-long.
"So, it is impossible maintaining social distance," he added.
But MA Salam, first vice-president of the BGMEA, remains defiant about the necessity to reopen the factories amid the ascending curve of coronavirus in Bangladesh.
Some buyers from the EU, the US, Japan and China have located some orders, which will be fulfilled next couple of days. "Once those are done, the majority of the factories would be closed," he added.
