| Do you think that the current legal mechanism of Bangladesh is adequate in order protect labor rights. |
“All Citizens are Equal before Law and are Entitled to Equal Protection of Law”-Article 27 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh”
Introduction:
The legal mechanism is a legal rule or set of rule which is an atomic process that occurs during a reaction or the technical aspects of a country’s law. Every legal agreement has a legal mechanism. For example: Buyers must agree to this legal charge being secured on their home before the purchase can be completed. On the other hand, The Armed Forces Home Ownership Scheme documents include other obligations such as the requirement for owners to insure their property. But this legal mechanism differs from country to country and the situation to situation.
Labor might refer to:
Employment – any kind of
Wage Labor – in which a worker sells their labor and the employer buys it employment.
Manual labor – physical work done by people.
Legal System of Bangladesh:
The legal system of our country is based in part on English common law. Bangladesh seceded from Pakistan in December 1971. The British-era legislation applied in Pakistan after 1947 and post-partition legislation enacted in Pakistan continued to form the basis of Bangladeshi personal status laws, but legal developments since 1972 have been distinct.
Women in garments industry:
Garment sector is the highest employer of women in Bangladesh. The garment sector has gave employment opportunities to women from the countryside that formerly did not have any frontier to be fraction of the formal workforce. This has given women the chance to be financially independent and have a voice in the family because now they contributed financially. However, the women employees face a lot of problem. Most women come from low revenue families. Low wage of women employees and their complies have enabled the industry to complete with the world market.
What is child labor:
A child who have completed twelve years of age may be employed in such light work as not to endanger his health and development of interfere with his education. Provided that the hours of work of such child, where he is school going, shall be so arranged that they do not interfere with is school attendance.
Key statistics:
Working children’s, aged 5-17 7.4 Million
Working children’s, aged 5-14 4.7 Million
Child laborers (according to definition, below), aged 5-17 3.2 Million
Children engaged in hazardous labor, aged 5-17 1.3 Million
Child domestic workers 421,000
Percentage of children (aged 5-14) engaged in child labor (2006) National Slum Tribal
12.8 19.1 17.6
International Labor Organization (ILO), Baseline Survey on Child Domestic Labor in Bangladesh, 2006 2 BBSI UNICEF, Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2006, October 2007 All other statistics from Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Report on National Child Labor Survey, 2002-2003.
Child Labor in Export Industries:
According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics Labor Force Survey (1990), there are 5.7 million 10 to 14 year old children working in Bangladesh. Another estimate puts the number at 15 million. Nearly all the child labor in export industries is found in the garment industry. According to the Bangladesh Ministry of Labor, “children are found working in garments, bakeries and confectioneries, hotels and restaurants, transport, bidi (cigarette) factories, small engineering workshops, fish-processing, and other informal and unregulated sectors.” There are also allegations of children catching and processing shrimp in Chittagong for export.
Some laws and regulations for labor rights:
Labor Rights Now strongly protested the jailing of top leaders of the largest union in Bangladesh. Police arrested Rajendra Prashad Boonerjee, president of the Bangladesh Cha Sramik Union (BCSU) on March 24, 2006. In a letter to Shamsher M. Chowdhury, the Bangladesh ambassador to the U.S., Labor Rights Now President Don Stillman urged his immediate release along with that of Narendra Boonerjee and Bupesh Sind, also officials of the BCSU.
The labor force of Bangladesh has long been the subject of abuse and restraint when it comes to granting the workers their fair share of labor. The labor rights of Bangladesh are notorious protected in the face of high global standard. The labor laws of Bangladesh have proved to be too inadequate to safeguard labor rights. And the government of Bangladesh has shown consistent reluctance in formulating laws that would better protect the labor rights.
Bangladeshis face perilous working condition and an awful minimum wage, which even with its recent increase, fails to cover most basic cost of living.Moreover,minimum wage laws and other labor rights protections face serious systematic lack of enforcement. Workers in the apparel sector, Bangladesh’s largest export sector, face widespread occupational health and safety hazard. In one case in 2010, 21 garment workers suffocated in an apparel factory in Dhaka after escape routes were intentionally locked.
Workers and allied organizations that advocate for the enforcement and protection of internationally recognized worker’s rights face various impediments including threat of violence.The GoB assumed an oppositional approach to nongovernmental organizations (NGO) and trade unions in Bangladesh during the “state of emergency” declared in January 2007. Since the end of the “state of emergency” in December 2008, the GoB’s approach to labor rights advocate has not changed.
Since the 2007 petition and despite the scrutiny afforded by the case, the GoB has failed to direct its resources or apply the political will necessary to make substantial progress on the enforcing labor rights. Indeed, in recent weeks development related to a leading human rights organization, the BangladeshCentre for worker solidary(BCWS), suggest backsliding on the part of the GoB and overall decline of the situation for labor rights advocates in Bangladesh.
The Govt. has not demonstrated satisfactory progress toward protecting basic worker rights in Bangladesh, including,the important rights of free expression and freedom of association or strengthening overall access to rule of law for workers and civil society activists.
Education Laws for labor children:
Under Bangladesh law, children must attend school through the fifth grade. Primary education is free and compulsory, although not compulsory for girls in the rural areas. The implementation of compulsory education has fallen short in part because parents keep their children out of school, finding school accessories too expensive or preferring their children to be working for money or helping with household chores. The current government policy is to implement compulsory education in 50 percent of the country by 1995 and 100 percent by the year 2000.
Programs and efforts to address child labor:
In the past year or two, there has been significant action taken by the Government of Bangladesh, the BGMEA, international organizations, and NGOs to create solutions and alternatives for child workers. In its written testimony to the U.S. Department of Labor, the Government of Bangladesh listed official efforts either taken or planned for the future. Some of the efforts include a realization of the objectives of the Rights of the Child Convention (a National Program of Action for Children was launched on June 2, 1992); examination by the National Labor Law Commission on existing labor laws with the goal of updating and consolidating them into a “Labor Code,”; strictly enforcing child labor laws; continuing to publish notices containing the provisions of laws relating to child employment in daily newspapers and broadcasting prohibitory messages over TV and radio; and distributing posters prohibiting child labor.
The government is cooperating with international organizations such as UNICEF to develop non-formal educational and other support programs for working children. The government has reportedly also agreed to allow the ILO to conduct a national survey of child workers.
On July 4, 1994, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) announced that it would eliminate child labor from all garment factories by October 31, 1994. On May 5, 1994, Mr. Redwan Ahmed, president of the BGMEA, announced that in addition to setting up a hospital for garment workers, the BGMEA also planned to give informal education, professional training, and to provide health care facilities to the employees of the apparel sector by setting up seven clinic/hospitals and seven training center/schools in Dhaka and Chittagong.
There has been tremendous public reaction in Bangladesh to the proposed Child Labor Deterrence Act,* which, combined with serious concern for the welfare of the children, has resulted in the formation of a child labor coalition, consisting of representatives from international organizations, NGOs, labor unions, various government ministries, and representatives of the garment industry. The work is being spearheaded by UNICEF, which has researched and reviewed.
A number of private non-formal education programs for possible use in setting up schools for working children. In addition, numerous child welfare and education NGOs are active in the effort to provide assistance to working children.
The transnational corporations are becoming increasingly powerful. As profits are naturally the most important goal, damaging results can arise, such as violation of human rights, lobbying for and participating in manipulated international agreements, environmental damage, child labor, driving towards cheaper and cheaper labor, and so on. Multinational corporations claim that their involvement in foreign countries is actually a constructive engagement as it can promote human rights in non-democratic nations. However, it seems that that is more of a convenient excuse to continue exploitative practices. Freedom of Speech and Human Rights are taken for granted in the west, but recent years have seen conditions deteriorate around the world. Human Rights conditions were reported to remain unchanged compared to previous years, or in some countries. The first of the core labor standards, the freedom of labor association and recognition of the right to collective bargaining, clearly envisages that workers should be able to improve their lot through union organizing.
Prevention of forced or compulsory labor:
The penal code prohibits coerced or bounded labor; however, the formal punishment of imprisonment for upward to one year or a fine was not sufficiently stringent to deter the offence, and the federal did not impose the prohibitions effectively. Though relatively rare in urban fields, bonded labor waited frequent in countryside in servant service. Faced with extreme poverty and unemployment, rural employees, encompassing complete household, were buried in bonded labor, frequently facing physical insult and sometimes death.
Prohibition of child labor and minimum age for employment:
Under the law every kid must attend college through level five or the age of ten years, but there is no efficient constitutional machinery to impose these supplies, and kid labor is widespread,
Children’s were found-
• Working in street transportation, such as rickshaw dragging, automotive repair, minibus assistance, salt and match factories and tanneries,
• The manufacturing of brick,, cigarettes, dried fish, shoe, metal furnishing, glass, textiles, garments and soap,
• Printing, fabrication, stone breaching, dying operation, blacksmith contribution and construction hotels and restaurants,
• Begging, pottering, shining shoes, collecting paper and selling flower,
• Smuggling and trading arms and drugs.
Children commonly executed servant work. In 2008 the federal, with ILO advocate, deployed a kid labor unit at the Ministry of Labor and Employment to organize planning or execution of all child- related labor interventions.
Conclusion:
The law provides for the right to attend unions and, with federal satisfaction, the right to model a union, however many restriction on union booking remained. The total labor coerce was roughly 50 million, or whom roughly 1.5 million belonged to unions, a lot of which were associated with political parties. There were roughly 5,000 garment factories recruiting 2.5 million workers, more than 80 percent were women. No consistence labor statistics were available for the great informal sector in which the majority of civilians worked. There are lot of governs and law in Bangladesh but constitutional machinery is all right in command to shelter labor rights is not very correct. Most of the time authorities doesn’t wants to chase the governs and sometimes labor also breach the laws. We have governs but we didn’t appeal those. So federal must take care of it.
At last we can say our current legal mechanism is not up to date and it is rarely adequate in order to protect labor right.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Bangladesh
http://www.lawyersnjurists.com/best-law-firm/
http://www.thedailystar.net/law/2008/05/04/advocacy.htm
http://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/child_labor.pdf
http://www.apparel.com.bd/?p=126
http://www.ilo.org/public /english/dialogue/ifpdial/info/termination/countries/bangladesh.htm
http://www.citehr.com/295937-bangladesh-labor-law-english.html