Bangladesh garment workers torch police box, block highway over wage hike demand

Garment workers blocked a major highway and roads in Bangladesh’s Gazipur and Dhaka on Sunday, demanding a minimum monthly wage of BDT 30,000, or about Rs 23,000.The protests prompted the government to announce a new wage board and appeal to workers to return to their factories, local media reported.The current minimum wage for garment workers was announced in November 2023 and took effect in December that year. It is due to expire next month.The unrest hit a sector that employs more than four million people across around 4,000 registered factories. Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest apparel exporter after China, with garment exports worth $38.70 billion in the 2025–26 financial year, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA).PROTESTS TURN VIOLENT IN BANGLADESHIn Gazipur, workers chanting slogans blocked the Dhaka-Tangail highway to press their longstanding demand for higher pay, the Dhaka Tribune reported. Workers carrying sticks occupied several points along the highway in Kaliakair upazila, about 55 kilometres from the national capital.Many of them had marked their attendance at nearby factories in the morning before joining the protests, the report added.Protesters also set fire to a police box in the middle of the highway in Konabari, the newspaper quoted local police station officer-in-charge Iftekhar Hossain as saying.Border Guard Bangladesh deployed five platoons to help control the situation.In Dhaka, workers from several parts of Mirpur blocked a key arterial road, prompting the closure of the local metro station’s gates. Police were deployed to the scene, Prothom Alo reported.GOVERNMENT FORMS WAGE BOARDLabour and Employment Minister Ariful Haque Choudhury announced the formation of a minimum wage board and urged workers to leave the streets.Speaking at a press conference at the Secretariat, he said the government was treating their demands with the “utmost importance”, bdnews24 reported.“Their demand was a wage board; today their wage board has been formed. The board has been formed with the members they provided as representatives. Now, I hope they will leave the streets and return to their factories,” the publication quoted him as saying.The minister said wage board members would be urged to meet as soon as possible, adding that further discussions were now up to the workers’ and owners’ representatives.WHO ARE THE NEW MEMBERS OF WAGE BOARD?Senior District and Sessions Judge Sheikh Ashfaqur Rahman will chair the board, which includes representatives of factory owners and workers, along with an independent member.The owners’ representatives are BGMEA director ABM Shamsuddin and Bangladesh Employers’ Federation joint secretary-general Asif Ayub, according to Prothom Alo.Workers will be represented by Bangladesh Garments and Industrial Workers Federation general secretary Babul Akhter and Bangladesh Jatiyatabadi Sramik Dal president Anwar Hossain.Dhaka University public administration professor Mosleh Uddin Ahmed has been appointed the independent representative.- Ends