Now the children of the fasting jute mill workers with placards in their hands have come down on the streets by the side of their parents who are on fast- unto-death demanding the implementation of their 11 point demands. Many workers of nine state-run jute mills in Khulna zone fell sick as they continued their fast-unto-death for the fourth consecutive dayon Wednesday(Jan.1) to press home their 11-point demand.
The demands include implementation of the 2015 wage commission award and timely payment of wages. Convener of Collective Bargaining Agents (CBAs) and non-CBA Sangram Parishad, claimed that 20 workers were admitted to local hospitals and clinics since the beginning of the protest at 3:00pm on Sunday. Besides, at least 576 others became ill during the same period.
On Wednesday, around 200 students of Platinum High School joined the demonstration on BIDC road in Khulna city’s Khalishpur area. Many of them are dependents of jute workers.
A female student told barta24.com,’my father cannot maintain our four-member family smoothly due to poverty. How would he bear our educational expenses?’ she said.
She said her father was trying to send them to their village in Gopalganj’s Moksedpur upazila within a month as he was struggling to meet basic household costs.
Workers leader Khalilur Rahman of the on going hunger strike movement said the deputy commissioner of Khulna had asked them to sit in a meeting with him on Tuesday night, but they didn’t agree.
“State Minister for labor and employment Monnujan Sufian had taken the workers’ movement to the wrong path by requesting the workers to refrain from carrying out the movement. Now we don’t have trust in any such requests,” she said.
A leader of movement said many workers fell sick in the last four days as they had to stay on roads round the clock amid the cold weather.
Meanwhile, sources at the Khulna deputy commissioner’s office said Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation (BJMC) has called a meeting for today at its office in the capital to discuss the workers’ demands.
Worker leaders said they were invited to the meeting by the BJMC, but they were yet to make a decision in this regard.
Convener of Sangram Parishad, said they would attend the meeting if the workers granted them permission. Around 31,000 workers had gone on work abstention and observed fast-unto-death from December 10 to December 13.
Production at nine mills came to a halt due to the demonstration. However, Carpeting Jute Mills in Jashore was operating at partial production. Later, workers postponed their protest until December 17 upon assurances from State Minister Monnujan of fulfilling their demands.
On December 27, the Sangram Parishad leaders announced that they would resume their movement as their demands were not met.
The demands include cancellation of public-private ownership initiative, allocation of necessary fund for the jute sector, insurance for families of deceased workers, ensuring payment of provident fund and gratuity accumulation for retired workers and regularization of jobs of temporary workers.
Coordinating officer of BJMC Khulna zone Banijuddin Mian told barta24.com that of the total 9 jute mills of Khulna zone production in two mills only are on production partially. Earlier in closed 7 mills about 272.17 tons of jute goods were produced every day. But as those are closed the mills are losing worth take crores daily.