Two readymade garment factories were shut down indefinitely on Wednesday amid worker protests in Gazipur鈥檚 Konabari area.
Authorities of the MM Knitwear and Mamun Knitwear Limited announced the closure of the RMG factories under Section 13(1) of the Bangladesh Labour Act, 2006, allowing owners to close an institution partially or completely, in the face of an illegal strike.
Workers of the factories said that they saw the closure notice hung on the factory gates on Wednesday morning.
The Mamun Knitwear Limited closure notice, signed by its assistant manager, read that workers of their garment division showed disobedience and made chaos by stopping work on Tuesday morning.
Despite requested by the factory authorities, the workers staged an 鈥榠llegal鈥� strike inside the factory.
The MM Knitwear notice, also signed by its assistant manager, also made the same statement like that of the other company.聽
According to the police, the MM Group has three factories in Konabari area and its owners laid off about 300 workers from the three factories recently for allegedly 鈥榤isbehaviour鈥� of some workers. They, however, paid the dues of the affected workers.
Factory authorities issued an indefinite closure notice at about 10:00pm on Tuesday after the workers went on strike following rumours that some workers were beaten up during this time.
Seeking anonymity, some workers said that they stopped work after some of their laid-off colleagues were beaten by the owners.
MM Knitwear Limited administrative officer Monowar Hossain claimed that the allegations of beating up the laid-off workers were baseless.
Gazipur industrial police superintendent AKM Zahirul Islam said that the authorities declared the factory closed over workers鈥� misbehaviour.
Police personnel were deployed in front of the factory to avoid further troubles, he mentioned.