The Bangladesh Garments Workers Unity Council (BGWUC) has asked that workers receive a hike of 175% in their monthly minimum wages. If the hike is implemented, the workers’ wages would go from the current Tk 8,000 to Tk 22,000.

BGWUC leaders are expected to submit a charter of demands to the country’s labour minister and secretary for increasing the salary of RMG workers along with other benefits and forming a new wage board to suggest the wage structure for workers.

“The rise in minimum wage for garment workers is needed because of the abnormal rise in the cost of living fuelled by spiralling inflation and house rents,” Md Towhidur Rahman, chairman of the BGWUC, said at a press conference at the National Press Club in Dhaka.

Rahman also called for a 65% rise in the minimum wage based on the basic salary of seventh-grade workers from Tk 600, which was set up in 2006. In the wage structure of garment workers in Bangladesh, the seventh grade is the lowest grade.

“After 2006, four more wage structures were declared where, unfortunately, the basic salary was decreased every time in the name of giving other allowances. As a result, garment workers do not get their dues properly when they leave their jobs or are terminated by the management,” various Bangladeshi media reports quoted Rahman as saying.