Daughter’s schooling stopped to cut costs, fish and meat out of reach: garment workers’ struggling households
Photo: Collected
Roksana Parvin has had to stop one of her daughters from going to school to cut household costs. This sewing operator at a garment factory in Ashulia, near Dhaka, is 29 years old and a mother of two daughters. Struggling with expenses, she cannot even give her daughters nutritious food.
Export earnings and production in the country’s garment industry are rising, but a large share of the sector’s workers are living in hardship. Wages are not enough and prices of daily essentials are high — so they are forced to cut even essential spending such as food, treatment and their children’s education.
Roksana and her two daughters spend most days eating rice and vegetables. Fish and meat are now beyond their means. Roksana said, ‘I have to think twice before buying anything, even when buying food. I know my daughters should eat better food. But I do not have that ability.’
Shilpi Khatun, a garment worker in Gazipur, is under similar pressure. Twenty-seven-year-old Shilpi is the only earning member of the family; her husband is unemployed. The upkeep of her own parents and her in-laws is also on her shoulders.
She cannot afford the cost of gas, so every morning Shilpi gets up at dawn and cooks on a clay stove by burning wood. Then she sets off for the industrial area of Gazipur on the outskirts of Dhaka, where she works at a garment factory.
She has been working in the garment sector for five years, yet she struggles to meet daily household costs. In Shilpi’s words, ‘Now the price of everything has gone up. House rent has doubled, food prices are also high. Whatever I earn is all gone before the month ends.’
Out of the anger of thousands of workers like Shilpi and Roksana, a movement for higher wages took place last week. Workers demanded that the monthly minimum wage be raised from Tk 12,500 to Tk 30,000. A part of the movement turned violent, however. Several hundred factories had to be kept closed due to protests and clashes with police. Police fired tear gas and sound grenades to disperse the protesters.
Then on 4 November, the government’s wage board agreed to introduce a revised wage structure from December. Under the new structure, workers will get their first increased pay in January. But a decision on exactly how much wages will rise has not yet been finalised.
Mainly because of low labour costs, Bangladesh is now the world’s second-largest garment exporter; China is at the top. Bangladesh is also a preferred production destination for global brands — companies such as H&M, Zara, Gap, Primark and Walmart are on that list.
More than 80 per cent of the country’s total export earnings now come from the garment sector, which employs more than 40 lakh people. But the picture of life for a large share of the workers behind this success is different. Under the pressure of low wages and rising costs, they have to cut back on food, healthcare and other family needs.
Owners, however, claim otherwise. In their view, raising wages a lot at one go would reduce Bangladesh’s advantage in production costs compared with rival countries such as India and Vietnam. Profits are already under pressure due to higher energy costs; a big wage rise would increase that pressure further. They argue that apart from basic pay, workers get a 9 per cent annual increment and two festival bonuses, so the scope for a significant pay rise is limited.
Workers say that even when wages rose, they could not keep pace with prices of daily essentials. So they struggle just to meet everyday expenses.
On the worst days, the family has to get by on puffed rice alone, said Shilpi Khatun. She lives with her husband in a small tin-roofed room. Despite health problems, she has not gone to a doctor even once in the last three years.
Her pay has risen somewhat in five years, but income has not risen at the rate living costs have. When she joined work, her salary was Tk 9,000; now she gets Tk 13,500. Including overtime, her income comes to Tk 16,000 in all. Still, the money runs out before the next month’s salary arrives.
Since 2022, the average rate of inflation in the country has been close to 9 per cent. Along with food, prices of other daily essentials keep rising. Billions of dollars in garment earnings on one side, and Roksana’s daughter’s stalled education on the other — the lives of the country’s garment workers are passing through these two opposite realities.
Background
According to a Desh Rupantor report of 4 November 2026, the government formed a new six-member wage board on 1 November in the face of continuous worker protests. After the board’s first meeting, chairman Syed Azad Subhani said the final recommendation on the minimum wage would be made quickly this time without delay.
By the numbers
According to a bdnews24.com report of 26 November 2023, the wage board that time set the minimum wage for garment workers at Tk 12,500, an increase of 56.25 per cent. In that 2023 process, the workers’ side proposed Tk 20,393 and the owners’ side Tk 10,400.
Sources
Background sources: Desh Rupantor, 4 November 2026; bdnews24.com, 26 November 2023
