The five factories of Tuba Group worked on sub-contracts and generally received payments in cash, so the management’s claim that banks were not giving them funds because the owner was in jail, does not stand, agitating workers have said.
Workers claimed that Tuba Group had enough money to clear their dues because all the clients had made payments in July.
The Dhaka Tribune managed to contact the owner of one of Tuba’s clients who said he had made a payment in early July.
“I made some of my products at Tuba Group on the basis of a sub-contract...I could not get the entire order completed because the workers were protesting and abstaining from work demanding their dues...So I paid Tk8.9 lakh to the management of Tuba in the beginning of July for the partial work they had done,” AKM Ansarul Alam, managing director of Azra Enterprise Limited, told the Dhaka Tribune.
“The owner is in jail for the last eight months but the crisis started only three months ago. This proves that they can manage fund for wages without the MD,” Shafiqul Islam, packing supervisor of Tuba Textiles, told the Dhaka Tribune.
Md Anwar Hossain, admin manager of Taif Design, a sister concern of Tuba Group, whose workers are also fasting, said: “The payment of workers was regular until April, although the MD [Delowar] was in jail. But the crisis was created only to free the MD.”
“Even in July, there were enough subcontracting orders and the factory was kept operational,” Anwar said.
A worker of Tuba Group told the Dhaka Tribune: “We got the wage for March in April. We were still working. But we did not get any payment in May and June. By the beginning of July, workers were getting restless.
“The authorities of the factories who gave subcontracts to our factories sensed the probable unrest. So, they stopped the orders, took the partially finished work and cleared the payments for the work that we had done till that date. That happened before July 10 when we stopped working,” he said.
“This means that the Tuba management had enough money to pay our wages, overtime allowances and Eid bonuses. But they did not do it. Instead they held back our payments and forced us to take to the streets only to get the owner freed,” another worker alleged.
Tuba Group’s management and garments exporters’ association BGMEA have been saying that the dues for May, June and July and the Eid bonuses could not be paid as the banks would not give them the fund unless their owner was freed.
However, the group paid all the dues to the workers of two of its factories before Eid. The fact that the managing director was in jail did not prevent them from getting the funds out of banks. Not surprisingly, there is no unrest among the workers of those factories who got all their dues cleared.
“The bank provided funds for the wages of Tuba Garments because it had an LC [letter of credit],” said Joynal Abedin, uncle-in-law of Delowar.
“The problem arose when the banks refused to provide funds as the other five factories, who worked on the basis of sub-contracts, did not have LCs,” Joynal claimed.
Mohammad Hatem, president of the knitwear manufacturers’ association BKMEA, told the Dhaka Tribune that factories which worked on the basis of sub-contracts usually get cash payments right after they finish a consignment.
“They do not generally need to borrow from banks to pay the wages and allowances of their workers,” Hatem said.
The five units of Tuba Group, whose workers have not got their dues, are Tuba Fashion, Tuba Textile, Mita Design, Taif Design and Bughsan Garments.
The group requires around Tk4.13 crore to fully clear all the workers’ dues.
On July 24, the High Court granted two month’s ad interim bail to Delowar – also owner of Tazreen Fashion where a fire killed 112 workers in November 2012.
Delowar’s counsel sought bail capitalising the mounting crisis surrounding the unpaid dues of some 1,600 workers in five factories.
More than a year after the fatal November 2012 factory fire in Tazreen Fashion, Delwar surrendered before a Dhaka court on February 9, 2014. Since then he had been behind the bar until Tuesday.
