Women Entrepreneurships Fighting Poverty &
Right of Female Garments Workers:


Serajganj :

Madina Khatun is now a self-reliant and self-sufficient women. In her
owned cottage Chanachur (snack) factory she has her ten/twelve female
wage-earning co-workers. From the income not only she meets the needs
of food, clothes & shelter, but for education and health of her
family too. She has a family of two sons including her husband. Her
husband is just a seasonal farm labourer. Her Chanachur are sold in
the markets of different Upazilla under Serajganj, Jaipurhat and
Natore Districts. But it was a matter of few years back, when Madina
Khatun was just another woman, starving half of the year along with
her children forced to depend on her husband's income only. She had
to fight against the male ego of her husband, to face the askance
looks of the Matobbors and Morols of her village, but she was
determined to take loan of just Tk. 40,000 from a NGO, and put her
life at stake into the venture, for many which was looked upon as
dangerous adventure of risking her last scanty homestead.

Sreemongol :

Umme Hazra is mother of six children, the family including her old
mother and two adolescent sisters. Her husband, a tea plantation
worker earning a meager daily wage of Tk. 27. Laily's father had a
tea stall at Bibaimpur that closed down with his death, casting dark
clouds of poverty and starvation. Kajal Hazra's brothers drove him
out of house; they refused to feed the unemployed youth. Umme Hazra,
Laily, Laxman, Kajal & Shakuntala, each had their own story, but now
they all are self-employed, self-reliant and self-sufficient, taking
group micro-credit help from MPSEDA in 2002, they own a fancy candle
making factory. They now can afford to secure proper health care,
education for their minor dependants and children and shelter that
can survive ferocities of nature.

Bishnapur, Tangail:

Monzu a working mother was abandoned penniless with two children when
her husband went abroad. When her in-laws drove her out and she was
forced to take shelter in a basic cardboard shanty with job of a loom
labourer and live inhuman life. Rahela her co-worker with her husband
a rickshaw-puller, had to work, as maid during weaving off-season,
was short on confidence. But now, Monzu and Rahela are themselves
owners of looms, have enough money to support themselves, their
family and children with proper health-care, education those earned
them dignity.

Those were the three reports just in today's three dailies in
Bangladesh. There will be a hundred of thousands of efforts like
those enacting the metamorphosis towards empowerment of women,
struggling against the impediments of low level of consciousness,
male patriarchal values, and pseudo-religious dogmatic repressions.

When the task of the women activists have been clearly identified as
to create consciousness about women's problems related to education,
health, employment, legal and environmental issues; to act to bargain
in to adopting the policies of the Government and the State towards
establishment of environment conducive for women ensuring rightful
share over social resources, means of production, land and labour, it
looks rather unfortunate, people sitting in the helm of affairs
penning through metaphors of equality and liberty had through decades
ignored that, it is not that we should limit our responsibility to
describe the conditions and idealize the goal, but the real
responsibility lies into identifying and by putting in to place the
mechanism that will bring about the change in the quality of the
lives of women emancipating from the shackles of the society, which
is controlled and dominated by patriarchal values, recognizing the
legitimacy of male domination over social resources, means of
production, land and labour, turning gender relation into a scenario
of domination and sub-ordination, authority and dependence.

Hence, now consider: if those incumbents whose efforts presented in
the foregoing were not primarily have given the opportunity and right
to access capital, how could they have ever got the opportunity to
prove their entrepreneurship, which changed their lives?

I quite agree that industrialization and industrial development also
the major creates sets of relations of forces in motion ameliorating
conditions of lives. Those initiatives of the public/private
enterprises, without having integrated in to those efforts the vast
majority of human resources and not having considered and made them
their able partners, would not see the light of sustenance. The
reason of low level of industrial development in Bangladesh, to have
been not able to achieve sustained technological and economic growth
capable to face the competition even within the regional markets,
have been identified among others including the backwardness of skill
of technology, management and labour resources.

1) Consider:

The export figures of RMG from Bangladesh from 1990-2000, in Million
Taka:


Year Woven Garment Knit Garments Total
_____________________________________________________
1990-91 25,938 4626 30,564
1991-92 40,506 4513 45,019
1992-93 48,192 7946 56,138
1993-94 51,472 10,525 61,997
1994-95 73,605 15,773 89,378
1995-96 79,706 24,471 104,177
1996-97 95,291 32,501 127,792
1997-98 129,001 42,661 171,662
1998-99 143,211 49,679 192,890
1999-2000 154,436 63,618 218,054
____________________________________________________________
Total of ten years:841,358+256,313= 1,097,671
_____________________________________________________________
Source: Export Promotion Bureau of Bangladesh.

2) Consider:

About 50 % of the export is made to USA.

3) Consider:

About 90 % of those garments are of casual wear categories.

4) Consider:

Number of Seminars during the last 5-6 years discussing necessity of
establishing backward-linkage industries to fulfill compliance
requirements to secure GSP.

5) Consider:

Number of seminars during last 5/6 years discussing necessity of
improving technology and workers skill to be able to increase
production in quality Brands/Dress category of garments rather than
casual categories of RMGs only.

6) Consider:

European Union and US representatives advised BGMEA many at times
to establish workers hostel with proper health conditions, child-care
& educational facilities for the children of the Garment Workers and
training institutes to raise their management & technical skill with
joint initiatives through compulsory contributions by all the members
of BGMEA and the Government, although government already extended and
continued to extend number of incentives already making their
contribution to the RMG industry when still RMG industry sector in
Bangladesh after its inception history of more than 25 years, can no
more be regarded as in the infant stage for spoon feeding, the real
professional initiative which was expected from BGMEA was not
forthcoming.

Now, the representatives of US Congressional Caucus, in spite of
having all those predicaments in place, and in spite of realizing the
global politics influencing the bilateral relation between USA and
Bangladesh, Congressman Joseph Crowley during his recent visit,
received unanimous appeal from all sections of public of Bangladesh
to undertake their earnest and strong lobby effort towards inclusion
of Bangladesh in the list of countries receiving GSP facilities by
the Government of USA beyond 1st January,2005, during his and one of
his congressional colleague's most recent joint visit to Bangladesh.

Considering though the wretched conditions of the Female Garments
workers for which the BGMEA is to made responsible, but considering
yet the impending debacle that may worsen their conditions from 1st
January, 2005 onward, when Bangladesh may loose its Generalized
Special Preference (GSP) to the US market (although other 46
countries would enjoy it); if BGMEA would elevate the position of the
Female Garment workers rather not from considering them to be
partners in the one day honey-moon but to be their able partners at
least on the very issue of sustainable "industrial development" in
the RMG sector of our country and integrate the Female Garment
Workers representatives with dignity into the permanent lobby effort
to bargain into continued application to secure the GSP for more some
years, no doubt, that would be an important step forward and, in that
way we may one more time be still hopeful that we have still some
scope and time to step forward for solving this particular national
problem.

The Moderator of e-forum Banglarnari having URL
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/banglarnari has made a proposal at the
foot-note of my latest post made to that forum
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/banglarnari/message/496 while inviting
suggestions for innovating ways and means at the same time also
suggested whether we (although it was not made clear whom `we' meant)
may lobby probably through writing a letter(s) of appeal on this
issue of receiving GSP facilities by Bangladesh, supposedly to
Congressional caucus of Bangladesh at the Capitol Hill, considering
national interest, I would second the proposal for the members of
Banglarnari and all the e-forums consisting Bangladeshis and the
Bangladeshi Diaspora to adopt this proposal to realize the proposal
made into an action programme.

AFROZA BEGUM
Dhaka, 14th February 2004