Rising living cost dampens economic recovery of RMG workers

In post-Covid Bangladesh, RMG workers are struggling to go back to pre-Covid life despite enjoying a slight increase in income in exchange for longer working hours, according to findings of a recent survey.

The survey titled ‘The Lives of Garment Workers during Covid-19’, conducted jointly by the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM) and Microfinance Opportunities (MFO), was presented at a webinar held on Thursday.

The presentation said the long working days translated into many workers working excess hours, which are any hours worked during the day that exceeds the legal limit of 10 hours a day.  

Workers were back to work quickly after the pandemic lockdown in April 2020. The number of hours they have been working has increased ever since, working over 10 hours a day. There were peaks in the month before Eid-ul-Azha in July 2020 and June 2021.

The median work hours for both male and female RMG workers in May 2020 were eight hours. It climbed to 11 hours for males and 10 hours for females in March 2022.

Income during the first three months of 2022 increased mainly due to excessive workloads and overtime. However, this additional income is overshadowed by high living costs, which have increased manifold, the survey found.

These additional working hours resulted in a slight increase in median salary per month. It hovered around Tk 8,000 to Tk 9,000 in May 2020. It went up slightly to Tk 13,000 for males in March 2022 and 12,000 for females.

Much of this additional income, however, was consumed in paying house rents. According to the presentation, house rent went up by 17 percent over a period of two years from 2020, while rice prices increased by 12 percent.

“Rent payments remained steady at Tk 3,000 from April 2020 until November 2020. In December 2020 the typical rent payment increased to Tk 3,100 and has been generally on the rise ever since. As of March 2022, the typical monthly rent payment made by a garment worker was Tk 3,500, representing a 17 percent increase over a period of two years,” the survey found.

The survey was conducted every week since March 2020 on a selected pool of 1,300 garment workers from Dhaka City, Savar, Gazipur, Narayanganj and Chattogram.