As early as 1965, the Factory Act came into being in order to ensure a working environment for the labour force, yet even by the none too high standards of that law, the state of workers remains dismal. High-tech automation in a globalising world coupled with the increase in privatisation of industries, has exerted new pressures on the traditional job market place. Labour is being retrenched calling for retraining and social safety net covers. Besides, they have to work with each individual entrepreneur applying his/her own standard.

Most employers, of smaller units in particular, continue to ignore the existing provisions for labour security, payment of prescribed wages, including compensation on account of extra hours of duties. In the case of female workers, the situation is even gloomier. They continue to work under conditions that are degrading, often with remunerations that are lower than those of their male colleagues.

Special attention needs to be paid to the conditions of the largest population of female workers employed by the country's RMG sector. It is here that they have to work in an extremely insecure and unhealthy environment having no proper protection against accidental fires to top it all. Many factory buildings also stand on unsafe foundations. The deaths of hundred of workers in accidental fires and building collapses are all too known to bear any repetition. Pitiable also are the conditions under which the most of the household labour has to work.

It is for the public and private sector leaders to enforce and ensure the basic rights for our deprived labour force in the interest of higher productivity and rapid economic growth, let alone for our better image across the world. The labour, for their part, should be obliged to abide by work ethics.