News - 19 February 2020 Travel report 2020 from India & Bangladesh In January 2020, Gisela Burckhardt, Chief Executive Officer, and Sina Marx, Foreign Projects Officer, travelled to India and Bangladesh. We are regularly at our Local partner organisations, to plan together for the future and to convince us that your donations will arrive where they are needed. Here we want to share some personal impressions with you. Impressions of Bangladesh Solidarity helps - but requires courage “Since 2006, I have been visiting Bangladesh on a regular basis, and every time I see the same picture: Many young people, everywhere bustling, patched streets. The capital Dhaka always seems half-finished, a jumble of houses, bad air and street noise. The textile industry shapes the country, a large part of the export revenue comes from this sector. Together with our foreign project consultant, Sina Marx, I speak to laid-off workers and many who are participating in a training course on gender-based violence in the workplace. Gender-Based Violence, GBV) from our partner BCWS. Talk to each other and Solidarity with victims of sexual violence But it still takes a lot of courage from women. Nevertheless, the trainings and examples show that women dare to defend themselves, although the risk of losing the job is great. Protests are also punished with redundancies and blacklists. Thousands of workers demonstrated against wage increases, which were finally granted after five years in 2019, but were so low that there can be no talk of an improvement in the living situation. Many of the sacked workers still have no job. All the seamstresses we're talking to are talking about a greatly increased working pressure. Fewer people need to produce the same amount. The pressure is so high that women no longer drink in order not to have to go to the toilet and lose time. I often wonder: How do they stand it?’ Gisela Burckhardt Exploitation of mothers has consequences for children “We also visit Mim, a seamstress who was on Speakers' tour in Germany in 2017, in her home. Together with her daughter and husband, she lives in a small room in a dark working-class settlement. The large bed fills more than half of the room, clothes hang on the wall. The room is gloomy, has no window and when the electricity fails, we sit in the dark. Toilet and laundry room they have to share with many other families. The highly pregnant Mim will soon be a single parent. Her husband plans to work in the construction industry in Saudi Arabia for at least five years. He will earn twice as much there as in a textile factory in his home country. One day we cross with a small boat the dirty river Buriganga, a side arm of the Ganges. Whether there are fish in it, we ask. The boatman waved. ‘No fish, only chemicals.’ On the other side of the river are the illegal small clothing factories with up to 20 workers, many of them still children. Child labour is not hidden, we are happy about our unannounced visit. We just walk up the steps somewhere, follow the sounds of the sewing machines, open the door to the stuffy little rooms. The label of the trousers says: We are told that they are ‘made in China’ or ‘made in Thailand’ – they mainly produce here for the domestic market. Our local partners explain: ‘Child labour is scarce in the big factories, the international buyers do not want to see that. But if the women in these factories work for starvation wages, then their children have to earn something elsewhere so that the family can survive.’ Sina Marx *MSI = multi-stakeholder initiative, more about this...
