Due to the coronavirus pandemic, garment workers are cutting cost on health, education, etc., which would impose a huge inter-generational impact on the wellbeing of Bangladesh, underlined experts while expressing their concerns over the challenges related to food security, faced by the apparel workers.
The observations were made by the experts at the webinar titled ‘What’s going on? Lessons from the Garment Worker Diaries: COVID Context’, held on Saturday jointly by the Microfinance Opportunities (MFO) and SANEM or the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling.
Due to the pandemic, there are reasons to be concerned about employment and food security in the garment sector, said Guy Stuart, Executive Director of Microfinance Opportunities (MFO), in a press communique issued in this direction.
Guy Stuart maintained this in connection with the programmes and policies needed to mitigate job loss in view of the state of the security for the next few months even as a study carried out by MFO and SANEM amongst 1,300 garment workers, found 8 per cent of garment workers reporting they were unemployed in September, up from 5 per cent in October, thereby raising apprehensions that a second wave of the pandemic will hit job security further even as unemployment in the RMG sector deepened in September.
Experts, thus, stressed on formulating policies to mitigate the long-term impacts!
As per findings of the research, working hours had started increasing from May and during June, July and September as working hours resembled that of 2019 (246 hours per month).
However, President of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), Dr. Rubana Huq, reportedly underlined that in June-July working hours increased due to shipments of un-exported orders from previous months.
In context of a second wave of the pandemic, the BGMEA President reportedly underlined that there is uncertainty with respect to the same.
It is the situation in the future that will determine the employment situation in the RMG sector, in other words, reportedly maintained Rubana in the press release.