Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) on Thursday claimed that about 87 per cent of its listed factory workers received March wages, the deadline for the same set by apparel makers and government.
“The rest mostly belong to small and medium factories who don’t have big buyers behind them,” BGMEA president Dr Rubana Huq said.
According to BGMEA, it has more than 4,500 registered units while some 2,274 are engaged in direct exports. The rest do subcontracting.
Out of 2,274 units, some 1,665 paid wages as of today, the trade body said.
Wage disbursements are going on in some 97 factories in Dhaka and 119 in Chattogram.
Earlier, the government has warned the garment factories of taking legal actions including licence suspension and case lodging against them if they fail to pay March wages by today.
At the time when the buyers are cancelling orders, paying late and asking for discounts even from their existing big suppliers, Ms Huq said adding the smaller ones including who do subcontract and supply to both traditional and non-traditional markets, are facing liquidity problem.
“While we are approaching all banks for them and banks are also trying to cooperate, there are also small factories that are not even our members who are out on the streets,” she noted.
It has anyway become their issue to look at the overall picture and address.
Without active buyers’ support of these small factories where they run production, either directly or indirectly, solving their cases will be a problem, said Ms Huq.
The sector leaders, however, are tirelessly working with the financial institutions to come to their assistance but the challenge is not only in securing the bank’s agreement to fund, she said.
It’s also about the entire country is under lockdown and all institutions operating on limited hours.
So without public transport running, with a full-on lockdown, how the industry is expected to disburse salaries in a seamless manner, she asked.
“We will have glitches, but we will overcome.” The BGMEA president said.
Sensing this disruption was coming their way, she said this is why they were appealing from the association from day one.
