Lady luck not smiling on construction workers

Road construction workers Ashraf Ali and his wife Aynunnesa, in their sixties, were compelled to return home with their spades and baskets having failed to find the day's job on the morning of July 9.
The couple, who waited for about two hours for work on the Khalpar Road at Kamrangirchar of Dhaka, said they could earn about Tk 600 after working 10 hours that day, after paying Tk 60 to a middle-man.
But they do not get job for more than four to five days a week for scarcity of work and huge number of workers gathering there, for that reason the husband and wife have to face hardship in looking after their five-member family at a tin-shed house at Sylhetia Para.
The way of life of the couple labourers exemplifies that of almost 37 lakh construction
workers in the country.
They have no guaranty of job or safety at workplaces with a under paid job for more than eight-hour work.
A recent study of Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS) stated that 456 construction workers died and 433 injured in the workplace accidents in the last five years from 2012 to 2016.
The study found lack of safety measures and non-availability of modern equipments to be the main reasons behind the casualties. Most of the family members of the dead and wounded workers are not even paid any compensation.
In many cases, even dead labourers are implicated in cases. For example, with three dead workers, 10 other labourers of Multifabs Ltd in Gazipur were implicated in a case with Joydebpur Police Station in connection with a boiler blast.
Bangladesh Labour Act-2006's Section No 78/K stipulates that employers must provide equipments for "personal protection" of the workers.
But the employers hardly follow the law.
On June 6, three workers died after falling from the 9th floor of Rupayan Shapna Bilash on the Bailey Road in the city.
Abdur Razzak, General Secretary of Bangladesh Construction Workers' Union, told the Daily Observer that there was little safety precaution in the building.
Although the National Building Code specifies several safety procedures for all employees, few of these regulations are followed, he said. The owner of the Rupayan Shapna Bilash paid only Tk three lakh to the family members of the dead, he added.
Razzak demanded at least Tk 15 lakh for each of the dead workers.
On the owners' unwilling to follow the building code, Chairman of REHAB Alamgir Shamsul Alamin told an online news portal recently that the owners followed the code, which decreased the number of accidental deaths.  
The government fixed the highest Tk 700 and the lowest Tk 375 daily wages for the construction workers of various classes in 2012, which are not also maintained, Razzak said.