Editorial
Vandalism is highly reprehensible
RMG workers need to be restrained by their leaders
Most people are in sympathy with the garment workers' legitimate demands for remunerative minimum wage and for an improvement in their working conditions and environs. But their violent conduct on Saturday at Uttara and beyond cannot be condoned. The series of clashes between the workers and the law enforcers that saw 50 people injured, including 10 policemen and three journalists, were only part of the story. The workers attacked Uttara police station, damaged 62 vehicles and vandalised two markets, two banks, a few wayside restaurants in an act of mayhem that spread out along the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway like wildfire. Highway traffic was closed for four hours causing excruciating hardship to thousands of commuters. We can understand the workers' impatience for an early announcement of the minimum wage but that cannot be the reason for them to destroy private and public property and take it out on people who are not even remotely connected with their grievances. People abhor lawlessness from the core of their heart. If anything, the workers need all the moral public support they can get to have their legitimate demands ultimately fulfilled. The most cogent point for them to realise is that their demands are sought to be resolved at the macro-level in a holistic manner, so that there is no scope either for workers of individual garment factories or their owners to precipitate any confrontational crisis between them every now and then. But that is exactly what they seem to be doing. The genesis of the trouble in the present case is to be found in the following sequence of events: Syntax Knitwear workers converged for work at 7.30am on Saturday. On learning that the authorities have closed down the factory for an indefinite period and seeing a fellow worker in bloodstained condition, having been beaten by allegedly hired goons of the owners, the workers burst into anger and agitation followed. The situation worsened when employees from different factories joined hands with the Syntax Knitwear workers. Collective demonstration of anger smacking of clannish outburst is an evil, because if every professional group should fall for it, then there would be total anarchy in society. At the same time, however, we would expect the garment owners to help the wage board arrive at a minimum remunerative salary for the workers at the soonest.
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