BANGLADESH LETTER:Women in Bangladesh, one of Asia's best performing economies, have been empowered by a garments boom – but power shortages hold everyone back, writes MARK GODFREY.
I FELT sure of getting my visa for Bangladesh when the consular officer smiled at my passport. The Irish, he said, had built a resource centre for women in his home town, Chittagong, in Bangladesh’s humid, watery south.
His attitude may also be down to bemusement: Bangladesh, a moderate Muslim land of 150 million, doesn’t get many tourists. Since independence in 1971, the world’s most densely populated country has failed to shake a reputation for calamities of nature and political violence.
The reality is more promising. Despite political turmoil and corruption, and an interfering army, the past decade has been good to Bangladesh. A textiles boom has created jobs which have empowered local women and led to a dramatic drop in the country’s fertility rate. Couples had seven children on average in the 1980s, but now have two.
Women account for over 80 per cent of workers in Narayangonj, a garment manufacturing zone an hour’s drive from downtown Dhaka.
Employers see women as more disciplined, according to Mohammad Shamsul Haque, head of research at Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers Exporters Association (BKMEA).
The organisation, says Haque, has been targeting training programmes at young women – most of them illiterate and aged 16 to 18. They’re taught sewing, stitching and dyeing. “We give them certificates which make them much more employable in modern garment factories.”
At Kayaba Knitwear factory in Narayangonj, young women stoop over Japanese and Taiwanese sewing machines in huge rooms barely cooled by a rotating fan.
The factory, which ships to a mostly western European clientele, follows the same blueprint as other garment factories in this southerly suburb. In tall buildings, cotton yarn is spun into fabric on the ground floor before being moved up through several floors of sewing, cutting and printing, before reaching packers on the top floor.
In 2008 Bangladesh made nearly 80 per cent of its $14 billion (€10 billion) in export earnings from clothes assembled in factories like this. While orders have dropped, the global recession has in fact helped Bangladesh to grow: western fashion brands have left China for the lower labour costs of Narayangonj. It also helps that the EU has granted tax-free status to Bangladeshi exports.
Brands like Mango, Zara and HM are opening buying houses in Bangladesh, a sign they’re here to stay, explains Mohammed Zahid Hossain Mia, marketing manager at Apex Spinning Knitting Mills, a Bangladeshi company with orders from European fashion brands and retailers which once included Ireland’s Dunne’s Stores.
Narayangonj is the bottom of the barrel: wages don’t get lower. In its recent study of the textiles business across Asia, US-based consultancy Jassin-O’Rourke Group found that a Bangladeshi seamstress is paid US$0.22 an hour, compared to US$0.86 paid to counterparts in China. Cambodian seamstresses get US$0.32 per hour, according to the report. A BKMEA report claims locals earn US$0.25 per hour, compared to US$0.40 per hour in Vietnam and Indonesia.
These wages may be squeezed yet more, proving the precarious nature of the new-found prosperity enjoyed by Bangladesh’s women. Foreign buyers, citing global economic hardships, are forcing price cuts of 20 per cent from suppliers such as Apex, says Hossain Zia. Polo shirts sold for €20 in Europe will yield €2 for suppliers such as Apex. Cutting local garment makers’ take, says Hossain Zia, will make it hard for manufacturers to stick to a much heralded tripartite labour agreement between garment makers, government and foreign customers. The deal guarantees workers minimum pay, a day off every week and health cover.
Already, half the nearly 2,000 garment factories in Dhaka say they cannot afford to comply.
The global recession may indeed guarantee Bangladesh’s prosperity and wages. Hossain Zia actually sees wages continuing to rise: attracted by low costs, noted foreign brands – worried about being associated with sweatshops – still insist on a minimum wage. Hence, Apex is to lift wages from an average of US$85 a month in 2008 to US$100 by the end of 2009.
Bangladeshi economists also worry that a global economic recovery could hurt Bangladesh if western consumers ditch the cheaper products shipped by Bangladesh to large western discount retailers.
Things could also get better: locals see a further bounce coming in duty-free access to US apparel markets, similar to the deal Bangladesh has with the EU.
Bangladesh expects GDP growth of 5 per cent this year, but power shortages could curb growth. Factories in Norolgonj are barely affected by the hourly blackouts, as they run their sewing machines on generators. Even in Dhaka’s business district, stubs of candle wax stick to the banisters of office staircases.
This remains a bureaucratic and unequal society of shocking poverty. But the history of hard work of the seamstresses of Narayangonj is perhaps proof that Bangladesh, through its women, is overcoming its reputation for poverty.