Too few labour courts
Justice eludes most workers
There are 3.6 million people working in the garments industry in Bangladesh, and many more labourers working in other industries across the country. At the moment there are 13,000 pending cases with seven labour courts in Bangladesh out of which 9,000 are in Dhaka. The seven courts do not sufficiently serve those who come to them for justice. And there are numerous cases which do not get filed because not every district has a labour court and if a worker from Sylhet has to travel to Chittagong to file a case which will most likely be pending for years, why would he or she want to lose his/her daily wage, let alone take the hassle.
Ministry of Labour and Employment's website says their vision is "To reduce unemployment and poverty through productive employment and human resources development by maintaining good industrial relation and relation development between workers and employers." Does productive employment for workers mean just keeping a job and working on the relations and relational development between workers and employers mean neglecting the workers rights and pleas and delaying the process of justice?
Though a majority of our country lives below the poverty line our laws in so-called organised working sectors do not serve the poor. The set up and functionality of the labour courts are a prime example of the kind of negligence shown to the individuals who have not much to give us but the strength of their arms and legs. That strength might equal up to 14.4 bn Euros of export for the garments industry but to us they are nothing more than replaceable arms and legs. Needless to say, it is high time to reconstruct the labour ministry's ways of dealing with our labour law issues, if we do not fix the base of our law system when dealing with our laborers, we would have an added image problem overseas.
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