Bangladeshi garment workers continued their protest for the third consecutive day today, with thousands of them taking to the streets in the national capital demanding hike in their wages.
Authorities were forced to shutdown over 100 garment factories temporarily as the angry workers came out from the factories chanting slogans and demanding a USD 100 minimum monthly wage, police said.
On Saturday, authorities ordered temporary shutdown of nearly 300 garment factories as several thousand workers took to the streets demanding higher wages.
Officials said the management of garment factories shut production at suburban Gazipur and Savar areas on the outskirts of Dhaka after over 10,000 workers came out of the units and blocked transport movement on Dhaka-Tangail Highway.
The workers unions have been demanding the minimum monthly wage of USD 100 or 8,114 Takas while the factory owners said they could raise the amount to as high as 3,600 Takas or 20 per cent due to gloomy global economic conditions.
Bangladesh is the world's second-largest garment exporter with over 4,500 factories which account for nearly 80 per cent of the country's USD 27-billion annual exports paying a worker the minimum wage of USD 38 a month.
Widespread protests for wage hikes in 2006 and 2010 led to deadly clashes, leaving dozens of workers dead and hundreds of factories vandalised but this protest is the first major one since the deadly collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in April that killed at least 1,127 workers.
