Garment factory workers go through the same tribulations come Eid. How much will it cost to go home? How much rice can be bought? Can the grocer's credit be cleared? Can the rent? Will that leave enough for new clothes for the children at least?
The answer depends on whether the wages and festival allowance come on time.
The labour minister had directed factory owners to pay festival allowances by May 21 well ahead of the Eid, and clear monthly wages within the stipulated time. Yet industrial police data showed that 3,745 of 10,238 factories in eight industrial zones had not paid festival allowances by Sunday. Another 535 factories had not cleared April wages, according to a Prothom Alo report published on Monday.
Before Eid-ul-Fitr this year, 31 percent of garment factories in six key industrial belts had missed the festival allowance deadline, reported this newspaper. The report also said 12 percent had not paid February wages. A home ministry assessment at that time had warned that 180 RMG factories, employing 138,392 workers, were at risk of failing to pay wages and bonuses.
Before Eid-ul-Fitr in 2025, nearly 75 percent of 9,596 garment and non-garment factories had not paid March wages, according to industrial police. In 2024, industrial police estimated that 416 factories could face difficulty paying salaries and bonuses before Eid.
This is not a surprise. It has been an old phenomenon. Only the numbers change.
But the law is clear. The Bangladesh Labour Act recognises festival allowance as a benefit paid to workers on religious festivals. The Bangladesh Labour Rules, 2015, say a worker who has completed one year of continuous service is entitled to two festival bonuses a year, each not exceeding monthly basic wages. When factories withhold it, they are breaking a law.
On the other hand, workers are not asking for sympathy. They expect the money that is part of their employment and should already be built into production costs.
For many, the Eid bonus pays for travel, food, rent, medicine, children's clothes and small debts. When that payment is delayed, Eid disappears from the life of the person whose labour kept the factory running.
Owners cite delayed buyer payments, fewer orders, bank pressure and rising production costs. Some of these pressures are real. But Eid does not arrive suddenly. A factory that can plan raw material imports, production schedules, buyer audits and shipment deadlines across months cannot credibly claim it was unable to plan for a festival that appears on the calendar every year.
When planning fails selectively, and always in the same direction, always at the worker's expense -- it is no longer a planning problem.
And the answer is determined by leverage. Banks can press owners and receive a response. Buyers can impose conditions and receive compliance. Suppliers can stop delivery and receive payment. Workers have little room to push back.
Many have thin savings, many fear losing their jobs, and many know that protest can invite consequences at the factory gate. This is why the pressure travels downward. It lands on the person least able to carry it and most available to absorb it.
The state understands this, because it tracks it. Before every Eid, the industrial police prepare risk lists, ministries hold meetings and trade bodies update payment figures. The information exists. What is missing is consequence. The matter becomes urgent only when workers gather at gates or block roads -- at which point a legal and contractual failure is reframed as a public order problem.
Repeat defaulters should be named. If they receive state support or facilities, those should be reviewed. If they belong to BGMEA, BKMEA or other trade bodies, those bodies must explain what action they have taken.
Associations cannot serve only as defenders of the sector. They must also enforce discipline.
Bangladesh's garment sector generates the bulk of the country's export earnings. But the worth of an industry cannot be measured only by shipments and foreign exchange.
It must also be measured by whether workers receive what they are legally owed, when they are owed it. The responsibility is clear -- owners must plan and pay, trade bodies must stop shielding defaulters through silence, and the government must make missed deadlines genuinely costly.
Workers have made this calculation before too many Eids. They should not have to make it again next year.
Arafat Rahaman is a journalist at The Daily Star. He can be reached at [email protected].
