Dhaka: Garment workers in Bangladesh on Sunday staged protests in Gazipur and Dhaka over their longstanding demand for higher pay, prompting the government to announce the formation of a wage board, according to local media reports. Garment workers chanting slogans blocked the Dhaka-Tangail highway in Gazipur, demanding a minimum monthly wage of BDT 30,000 (approx INR 23,000), the Dhaka Tribune newspaper reported.
Bangladesh garment factory
The country's garment industry has around 4,000 registered factories and employs more than four million workers, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA).
Bangladesh is the world's second-largest apparel exporter after China, with garment exports reaching USD 38.70 billion in the 2025-26 financial year, according to the BGMEA. Its garments are exported to more than 150 countries.
Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) deployed five platoons to help control the situation in Gazipur, the report said. Workers carrying sticks occupied Safipur Bazar, Chandra Polli Bidyut, Mouchak and Telichala in Kaliakair upazila and other points along the highway, it said.
Workers first marked attendance and then joined protests
Workers from nearby factories marked their attendance in the morning in their respective workplaces before joining the protests, the report said.
Protesters set fire to a police box located in the middle of the Dhaka-Tangail highway in the Konabari area, the newspaper quoted Iftekhar Hossain, officer-in-charge of Konabari police station, as saying.
In a similar protest, Garment workers blocked a road at the Mirpur 10 intersection in the capital, Dhaka, the Prothom Alo newspaper reported. As a result of the blockade, the gates of Mirpur 10 metro station were closed, the report said.
Garment workers gathered from several locations in Mirpur Sunday morning and blocked Mirpur 10 intersection, the report quoted Saiful Islam, a sub-inspector (SI) at Mirpur Police Station, as saying. Police were sent to the scene, he said.
Return to work: Labour Ministry
Meanwhile, Labor and Employment Minister Ariful Haque Choudhury urged the protesting garment workers to return to work after announcing the formation of a new minimum wage board, the bdnews24 web portal reported.
Speaking at a press conference at the Secretariat, Choudhury said that the government is treating the demands of workers with the "utmost importance", the web portal reported. "Their demand was a wage board; today their wage board has been formed. The board has been formed with the members they provided as representatives. Now, I hope they will leave the streets and return to their factories," Ariful said.
The wage board is headed by Senior District and Sessions Judge Sheikh Ashfaqur Rahman as its chairman. The owners' representatives on the board are ABM Shamsuddin, director of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), and Asif Ayub, joint secretary-general of the Bangladesh Employers' Federation, Prothom Alo reported.
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The workers' representatives are Babul Akhter, general secretary of the Bangladesh Garments and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF), and Anwar Hossain, president of the Bangladesh Jatiyatabadi Sramik Dal, it said. Professor Mosleh Uddin Ahmed of the Department of Public Administration at the University of Dhaka has been appointed as the board's independent representative, the report said.
"We have been informed about the formation of the wage board. We hope the government will begin the board's activities soon," the report quoted Babul Akhter as saying.
(With inputs from agency)
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