Dhaka's vital clothing workers toil on despite teargas and death in the streets
Political turmoil has paralysed Bangladesh's capital – and some fear top western firms will pull out of the garment industry
The workers return long after the sun has set. Some walk across the concrete bridge which is the only link between the slum and the old city of Dhaka, then head towards the tenements on the far side. Others simply step off the high embankment beside the stinking river and, leaving the orange glow of three flickering street lights, disappear into the slum's narrow lanes.
In one alley, behind a mosque and a carpenter's workshop, is a row of tin shacks which are home to about 200 people. As elsewhere across Kamrangir Char, one of the biggest and poorest slums in the world, most of the men here work on construction sites or pedalling rickshaws. Women are employed as domestic staff for the city's growing middle class or, increasingly, in the booming garment industry which supplies tens of millions of cheap shirts, trousers, sweaters and socks to high street retailers in the west.
Sitting on a plastic chair outside his shack, Mohammed Jahangir is, like many of the 160 million inhabitants of Bangladesh this weekend, angered by the unstable south Asian nation's politicians. For most of last week Dhaka was paralysed by violent protests launched by the opposition party to mark its hostility to the current government's plan to hold an election in January without installing a neutral caretaker administration first. More than 20 people died as activists burned buses and threw makeshift bombs at police, who replied with teargas and live rounds. Most casualties were bystanders, caught in the crossfire.
"This is how our country is. This is how our leaders are. I am a registered voter, but I am not going to vote," Jahangir, a mason, says. "A poor man's vote never makes any difference."
His wife recently lost her 4,000 taka (£31) per month job as a timekeeper at a garments factory making trousers for a well-known western brand. Jahangir blames a downturn in orders from the west following the collapse in April of a huge complex in the north-west of Dhaka housing more than 3,000 garment workers. More than 1,100 were killed in the worst industrial accident for a decade. Many worry that the industry will now move elsewhere, worried in case more tragedies further tarnish carefully marketed brands.
"The rich get richer and the poor get poorer or they die. That's how it is here," Jahangir, 35, says. More than four million people in Bangladesh work in the garment industry and economists estimate that at least as many again owe their jobs to the demand it creates. Four-fifths of exports from Bangladesh are garments.. read more:
