Thousands of workers of Beximco Group held a mass rally today in Gazipur, demanding the reopening of all factories located inside the Beximco Industrial Park.
They also called for the payment of their outstanding salaries and the extension of banking services to the factories.
At the rally in Sunsity, located in Kashimpur’s Sreepur, which began at 2:30 pm, thousands of workers chanted slogans such as: “We want work, not alms. We want to live with our families. Open the factories.”
Taslima Khatun, one of the workers, said: “We want our rights. Beximco cannot be closed. It won’t happen. We want to return to our workplace. Fifty thousand of our people don’t have jobs now. Ten crore people are indirectly connected to it.”
The workers have been protesting since 2:30 pm, demanding the reopening of 16 factories inside Beximco Industrial Park in the Chakraborty area of Kaliakair upazila, Gazipur, Abu Taleb, assistant police superintendent of Gazipur Industrial Police-2 of Konabari Zone, told The Daily Star.
Last year, Beximco Group laid off nearly 40,000 workers across its 15 apparel units, citing a lack of work orders for its export-oriented garment and textile factories located on the outskirts of Dhaka in Gazipur.
The group issued notices on December 15, 2024, informing all officials, employees, and workers that layoffs would take effect the following day, December 16.
Beximco employs around 70,000 workers, meaning the layoffs accounted for more than 57 percent of its workforce.
On January 14 this year, AHM Shafiquzzaman, the labour secretary, told The Daily Star that the government is working to find jobs for the 40,000 laid-off workers in factories under the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority and the Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority.
In addition to finding jobs for the affected workers, the government is also seeking foreign buyers for the textile and garment factories, he added.
On January 20, a state advisory council convened at the Bangladesh Secretariat to discuss ways to sell the 16 factories inside Beximco Industrial Park in Gazipur, preferably to foreign entrepreneurs.
However, the council could not decide on the sale, citing the need for further scrutiny of the group’s bank statements.
The proposed sale aims to repay nearly Tk 50,000 crore in bank loans owed by the group, more than half of which has become non-performing, according to Bangladesh Bank data from November last year.
