Workers continue demos for dues
Nearly 400 personnel of an Italian-owned factory shuttered by simply the pandemic yesterday attempted to lay siege to the labor and employment ministry at the Secretariat demanding dues.
Stopped short simply by police, the demonstrators then continued to level a rally on the road in front till 2:00 pm, chanting demands designed for the payment of 11 months' pay, two Eid bonus deals, re-beginning of the factory and reinstatement of their jobs.
They had began from National Press Club in the administrative centre around 10:30 am, said knitting operator Mohammad Ashraful Islam, who spent some time working for 18 years at the factory of A-One (BD) Ltd inside Dhaka Export Processing Zone (DEPZ) at Savar.
Some 1,100 employees under diverse grades lost their careers on April 9 this season when the shutdown was announced, he told The Daily Superstar over the telephone from the rally.
The dog owner was desperate to sell off the unit as the company does not have any money for insufficient work orders alongside other fallouts of the coronavirus pandemic, he said.
A fraction of the dues were managed by the DEPZ from a buyer, leading to 1,000 personnel getting Tk 20,000 each although some others Tk 10,000 each on May 18. But practically 47 workers got almost nothing, he said.
"We worked in January, February and March but we were not paid…The owner continues to be in the united states. We also didn't contact him," explained Islam.
"We tried to receive the payment from the DEPZ…the DEPZ gave assurances 10 circumstances of paying the staff but actually they didn't pay us," he said.
Rather than the DEPZ keeping to its promise of selling away the factory's goods to repay workers, the establishment was rented away to some other person who hasn't offered all employment, he added.
The workers will get one month's fundamental pay for every single year of employment, gratuity, provident fund and other legal support benefits, said Md Abdus Sobhan, basic manager of the DEPZ.
A-One (BD) was turn off for failing woefully to make repayments, he said, adding that it owed the DEPZ Tk 2.5 crore and its own lease agreement with the zone authority was cancelled on April 18.
The workers' arrears total Tk 4.75 crore and though some $40,000 could possibly be managed and furnished to the workers, it had been not the ultimate payment, he said.
The DEPZ has been around contact a couple of times with the owner, now barred from departing the country, but he is struggling to develop the payments, said Sobhan.
A DEPZ auction to sell off the factory on 3.5 acres of land two months ago was at the final stages but got halted for a writ petition filed by a bank that your company owed Tk 50 crore, he informed.
"We have also applied to the High Courtroom for vacating the writ petition so that we can offer for sale the factory to at least to give Tk 4.75 crore arrears to the workers," stated Sobhan over the telephone.
The court's verdict arrives mid-December. "We must wait till in that case because it is usually a court issue now," he said.
"The DEPZ should seriously take on up the duty of the payment of the workers," said Mohammad Faridul Islam, president of National Garment Workers Federation's Ashulia wing.
The business's Italian owner could not be reached over the telephone despite several attempts.
A-One (BD) Ltd was first a 100 % foreign-owned sweater developing factory, and it had about 1,076 staff members before it had been closed on April 18.
The company have been failing woefully to continue its normal production since December 2019 due to shortage of recycleables, availability of satisfactory order and recurring order cancellation for worldwide coronavirus cases, said Nazma Binte Alamgir, general manager for pr of the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority (Bepza), in a statement.
Factory workers didn't get a three-month income from their management in those days. Taking into consideration the fact, the territory lease contract of the business was terminated on April 18, she said.
Because the factory owner could not run the factory, the Bepza was trying hard to look for a suitable investor, who is willing and capable of operating it. But nothing at all happened.
Finally, the Bepza went for the auction process, Nazma said.
But in the middle of the auction process, Dhaka Bank filed a good writ petition against the auction, and the High Courtroom passed a stay order on the procedure for per month and in the future extended it by another month, she said.
So that you can vacate the stay order to begin the auction process, the Bepza filed a petition with the Large Court. The hearing proceeds, Nazma said.
The Bepza has filed another appeal prior to the Appellate Division to declare the Dhaka Bank writ unlawful, she said.
