Workers of a factory demonstrated back saying that they had been cheated in the name of meeting their eight-point demand, including overtime bills and production bonus, at Kaliakair upazila in Gazipur yesterday.
Earlier on Wednesday, they had reached a consensus with the owning authorities at a meeting with the police and the BGMEA in the mediating role, after three days of demonstrations and work abstention from Sunday to Tuesday to press home their demand.
Factory authorities had then refused to meet the demand of continuing the overtime system as well as the wages on production beyond target saying that there was no overtime system for those who work for wages on production beyond target.
They had though wanted that the workers work on wages for production beyond target even after working eight hours until 5pm.
The workers had said that if they have to work after 5pm, they must be paid overtime bills as well as wages on production beyond target.
However, they had promised at the meeting to join back their work with the owners promising to meet their demand to some other demand and came to office yesterday morning.
On coming to the office yesterday morning, they they were however shocked at seeing a notice, which reads that their demands would be met subject to the approval of the managing director of Haesong BD Ltd, a sweater factory, who would return home from abroad soon.
Taking it for granted that the authorities’ promise to meet their demand was nothing but pull the wool over their eyes as they said authorities had put up the notice just for buying time, not to meet their demands.
They swung into demonstrations, blocking Kaliakair-Nabinagar highway, halting the vehicular movement to a halt for around two hours.
Police rushed in and the agitators hurled stones at them, leading to a clash, when at least 14 people, including police members and passengers, were injured.
They baton-charged, shot a few rounds of gunshots and tear canisters while the workers hurled stones and vandalised a few vehicles stuck on the highway.
Gazipur Industrial Police Inspector Zakir Hossain confirmed the occurrence of the above incident and said they were able to bring the situation under control around 11:30am.
Moreover, the authorities had declared closure of the factory for the day in view of the workers’ unrest. Additional police force was was also deployed at the factory to protect the factory from the workers’ unrest, he said.
