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Seventy-year-old Khadeza Begum is starving and incapacitated in her old age. She has been counting her breaths, for any time she may gasp her last starving breath, which is the only option left to her. She has nothing to eat as her son has been jobless since the government opted to close the jute mills.
More than 6,000 workers and their families at four jute mills are passing their days in the same manner. The military-backed interim government decided to shut the mills forever without paying the wages owed to the workers for months, although they promised to pay them later.
Four jute mills -- People's Jute Mills in Khalishpur in Khulna, Karnafuli Jute Mills and Forat Carpet Mills in Rangunai in Chittagong and Kaomi Jute Mills in Sirajganj District -- were closed on July 31. Eighteen others will face a similar fate in the near future, with 14,000 workers expected to be terminated in these factories. Moreover, workers have been forced to accept a "golden handshake" agreement at the Bengal Textile Mills in Noapara in Jessore; none of them have been paid.
People frequently ask, why these closures? The answer from the authorities is quite simple: The mills have incurred a huge loss. The government has reportedly calculated a net loss of 75.8 billion takas (US$1.10 million) of which 33.7 billion takas (more than US$490,000) are wages due the workers. The World Bank, which pretends to be a friend and development partner of the government, recommended the closure of the mills, and they were shut less than two weeks later.
What is the outcome of this decision?
First of all, this policy has resulted in more than 6,000 unemployed workers, who do not even have the opportunity to work as porters or pull rickshaws, and consequently, their families have not eaten properly for days. Moreover, another 14,000 workers have an uncertain future, and most of them have not received any wages for about a year.
In addition, thousands of jute cultivators are on the verge of extinction. Many of them have not received payment for their raw materials and will lose the opportunity to cultivate and sell jute for the foreseeable future. Thousands of jute and jute goods traders have nothing to do, as they have lost both their businesses and the money owed them, and cannot launch any alternative businesses as they lack the capital and experience.
The workers, who have toiled all their life, are always deemed the sacrificial lambs in Bangladesh. It is too easy for the authorities to terminate workers and eliminate industries, for the country's inept authorities have constantly failed to understand the deeply rooted problems behind these financial losses as they have failed for decades to assess the profit or loss of the industries.
In the past few decades the authorities, for example, have not assessed whether the machinery of the mills required replacement with higher capacity equipment or whether the workers needed further training to increase production or whether the management was skilled enough to improve the productive environment. In short, the authorities have been unable to properly monitor the workers and management. Moreover, there has been a host of other problems: manipulation by politically influential trade union leaders, rampant corruption and the waste of public money by officials as well as management. Above all, the authorities have not had a clear plan or a strong commitment to sustain the profitability of the industries.
In Bangladesh, the Ministry for Jute, along with the Jute Research Institute, is responsible for overseeing the industry. If the laid-off workers are held liable for the large amount of public money that has been lost, then what is the responsibility of the ministry? Why not first close the ministry and other institutions? What did the ministers and so-called educated, high-ranking bureaucrats do for decades to address the problems of the industry? Why should they not be sacked and held accountable for the utter failure of the most lucrative industrial sector of the country?
For almost half a century, jute was known as the "golden fiber" of Bangladesh. Bangladeshi jute goods had a good reputation around the world, and the jute mills were treated like goldmines. In recent years, however, this favorable perception has deteriorated. Now everything related to jute, including the cultivators, are facing extinction as a result of the failures of the Ministry of Jute and other bodies. The jute mills are being closed; the workers have lost their jobs after working hard for years and must return home penniless.
If the problem persists in the head, which aches after producing nothing but suffering, then cut it off! Lay off the Ministry of Jute! Bangladesh does not need it any longer.
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(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender living in Sylhet in Bangladesh who has been working on human rights issues in the country for more than a decade and who was a journalist in Bangladesh in the 1990s.)
