In this picture taken on March 15, 2021, Ruma works in a garment factory in Gazipur, Bangladesh. AFP
Dhaka: Big-shot high street fashion brands have paid Bangladesh factories producing clothes for them less than their actual cost, says new research.
According to a survey of 1,000 factories, many of these manufacturing units were paid pre-pandemic levels of prices, despite soaring prices of materials.
Many claimed, according to BBC, that owing to malpractices in purchasing, factories are unable to pay workers Bangladesh’s minimum wage of $2.80.
Bangladesh is the one of world’s largest readymade garments exporters, only second to China. The country exports 81 per cent of garments to the rest of the world. The industry employs around 20 million workers and is the major driving force of Bangladesh’s economy.
What did the research find?
The research was carried out by Aberdeen University’s Business School alongside a justice charity called ‘Transform Trade’.
The report, which is based on data from 2020 to 2021, found that as many as 90 per cent of the larger high-street fashion brands engaged in unfair purchasing practices including cancellations, failure to pay, delays in payment and discount demands.
Muhammad Azizul Islam, an Aberdeen University professor who led the project said, “Two years on from the start of the pandemic, Bangladeshi garment workers were not being paid enough to live on, with one in five manufacturers struggling to pay minimum wage while many fashion brands which use Bangladeshi labour increased their profits.”
“Inflation rates soaring around the world are likely to have exacerbated this even further,” he added.
Also, suppliers claim that larger brands indulge in such practices more often than smaller brands.
Following the pandemic, factories employed 75 per cent of the workforce they had before, which could mean that as many as 900,000 workers might have lost their jobs over the period of time.
‘Research a wake-up call for retailers’
Fiona Gooch, a member of Transform Trade said that the research is a “wake-up call.”
“When retailers treat suppliers badly by breaching previously arranged terms, it’s workers who suffer,” she told BBC.
She added, “If a retailer fails to pay the agreed amount, or delays payments, the supplier has to cut costs some other way, and this is frequently passed on to their workers, who have the least power in the supply chain.”
Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.