Nearly 200 factories laid off

 
Restless political circumstances all over Bangladesh for last one year have led to the closure of almost 200 factories. As a result millions of people have lost their jobs. These jobless people and their families have been going through unspeakable hardship for last several months.

For reasons of different anomalies and anarchy in the country's industrial sector, anger and despondency among countless numbers of workers have over and over again instigated them to block roads and highways in capital Dhaka city and in another two adjacent cities Gazipur and Narayanganj. In some cases law and order forces charged batons on the furious and hungry workers which has aggravated the situation instead of calming down the disappointment and outrage of these sacked employees.

Dire lack of rule of law across Bangladesh has terrified entrepreneurs and has brought the country's economic wheels to a grinding halt. Investments from both local businessmen and foreign entrepreneurs have drastically gone down in recent months. Robbery, mugging, gang rape, mob violence have gone out of the hands of the concerned ministries which have triggered countrywide panic and people's confidence on the ruling authorities have started jittering.

The all out depressive phenomenon has hammered people's earnings and made it hard for them to afford two meals a day. At the same time most of the prominent businessmen including media houses are being subjected to harassment and extortion which is a blazing sign of misgovernance.

On top of fired workers, students, teachers, physicians, engineers and even some factions of government employees are also demonstrating in the capital's Shahbagh, Science Lab, Uttara, Ashulia and even inside the Secretariat every now and then.

Professor Anu Muhammad of Jahangirnagar University said that discrepancies among wage earners could not be yet reduced. He stated that the government seized bank accounts of a large number of industrialists without making any alternative arrangements for the workers of these companies.

Professor Dr. Mainul Ahsan, Economics Department of University of Chittagong said that a great deal of owners of apparel industries have not paid salaries to their workers for around one year. The law and order forces crack down on the agitating workers but it's astonishing that no concrete action is being taken against these business tycoons as of yet who imperil thousands of employees by keeping their remunerations unpaid for months after months.