The latest world of fashion: Karanigonji
(ITGLWF Newsletter 2 Issue No. 3 1997)
ITGLWF staff members Steve Grinter and Silvana Cappuccio recently visited Karanigonji, near Dhaka in Bangladesh, where more than 30,000 people live and work in deplorable conditions for the clothing industry. "No picture or words can accurately describe the situation of human degradation here", writes Silvana Cappuccio
Karanigonji - as most parts of Bangladesh - has a landscape of bogs and swamps caused by frequent floods and river erosion. Here people eke a meagre existance from the unstable and precarious natural, economic and social conditions around them.
Before leaving the hotel, our colleagues had warned us that we would be visiting an underdeveloped part of Bangladesh. We did not appreciate the true meaning of their words since in Bangladesh at least 40% of the people live in conditions of extreme poverty and cannot afford two daily meals, medical assistance or their children's education. We could not imagine therefore something worse than these levels of adversity.
We arrived in Karanigonji by car from Dhaka after a journey of about 45 minutes. The scenery we passed was sad and grey; we saw shanty houses and floating shelters in marshlands and sandy tracts.
In Karanigonji, we found a concentration of large buildings in very rough surroundings. On the ground floor were markets selling clothes of various types. A local trade unionist took us to where these clothes were produced.
Behind the shops some dark and gloomy stairs lead upwards to six or seven floors. At first glance it seemed that this horrible huge place was uninhabited. In fact, about 4,000 people were working there making clothes to be sold mainly for the domestic market. People were crammed in separate rooms. In each room there were as many workers as it was physically possible to hold: 20, 30 even 50 people. The sewing machines - old Singer types some of which you might have found in Europe at the beginning of this century - were lined up in row after row. Workers squatted on the floor cutting material. Every inch of space was used. In many rooms there were no windows to allow natural light or ventilation, and where there was artificial light, it was weak and inadequate: loose electrical wires laced with cobwebs connected the bulbs in a way that seemed more like a scene from a nightmare than life in 1997.
Among the adults, many children were working bent over their machines. We tried to talk to them. Titon, 13 years old, big dark eyes, had worked "only" one year. He cuts and sews jeans seven days a week for 14 hours a day. He does not receive a wage as he is a 'trainee'. Like Titon other children: Kabir, Khurshid, Roton,....other questions, always the same answers: 12, 10, even 9 years old. The lucky ones earn 11 Taka a day (about 25 US cents).
Almost all the working children in this factory were boys, as discrimination operates even at this desperate level.
Bedding is stored on shelves or hung on clothes lines, and many workers sleep on the floor when they become too exhausted to work; often they don't have enough time between shifts to travel to and from home.
The sanitary facilities were indescribable. We saw one toilet for all the people on each floor - six for 4,000 people.
The infernal heat was made worse by the extreme levels of humidity, especially prior to the monsoon.
In Karanigonji more than 30,000 people live and work in such conditions for the clothing industry.
A series of often contradictory sensations struck us when visiting this place. They ranged from disgust to horror to astonishment. In this violent twister of sensations, the danger is that the feeling of helplessness gains the upper hand.
The visit to Karanigonji showed us to what extent human dignity can be trampled at the eve of the twenty-first century, at a time when we are also able to explore Mars....
