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The revision of minimum wages for the workers employed in 11 industrial sectors has remained pending for years although more than five years have passed since the last wage revision in the sectors.
The sectors include type foundry, petrol pumps, oil mills and vegetable products, homeopath industry, cold storage, privately-owned industrial sector’s adult unskilled and young workers, rubber industry, cinema, match industry, jute press and baling, and saw mills.
Of the sectors, the minimum monthly wages for petrol pump workers were last set at Tk 792 in 1987 and that for type foundry workers last set at Tk 521 in 1983, according to the minimum wage board data.
There is a provision in the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 that says wages for the workers in the country’s 42 industrial sectors have to be reviewed in every five years.
The labour ministry, however, has recently asked its department concerned to take initiative to review the wages for workers employed in the 11 sectors on a priority basis.
The labour ministry in its monthly coordination meeting held on Sunday asked the Department of Labour (DoL) to collect names of the representatives of owners and workers of the sectors immediately to form wage boards for the sectors.
The DoL representative to the meeting said that they had already sent the names of owners’ and workers’ representatives of petrol pump and jute press and baling sectors to the ministry to form wage boards.
According to the meeting documents, the department has recently received the names of owners’ and workers’ representatives from the match industry, the name of workers’ representative from the saw mill sector and the name of owners’ representative from the cold storage sector.
The DoL representative informed the meeting that they were yet to receive the names of workers’ and owners’ representatives from the rest of the sectors.
A DoL official said that they usually sent letters to the Bangladesh Employers’ Federation and Jatiya Shramik League seeking the names of owners’ and workers’ representatives for the wage board.
According to the ministry data, the revision of workers’ wages in nine other sectors is underway.
The sectors are ayurvedic industry, iron foundry and engineering workshop, tea garden, printing press, salt crushing industry, construction and wood, privately-owned jute mills, leather goods and shoe factory, and security service.
The labour ministry brought the security service sector under the minimum wage board regulations considering the size and volume of employment in the sector in February, 2018 and the process of setting wages for the sector workers is continuing for more than two and a half years.
