Made on Earth (6 page)

Tuk-tuks have a canopy overhead and can carry between two and six people. If necessary, they also carry large loads of rice, newspapers or furniture. If you’re a lucky tuk-tuk driver, like Hassan, you might get to ferry some bideshi around. Foreigners are always willing to pay a lot more for fares than locals. Although whatever Hassan earns, most of it will have to be given away almost immediately. Like most tuk-tuk drivers, Hassan’s taxi was bought with loaned money. The private loan company adds 10 per cent interest to what he still owes them, every month! This is why Hassan has to accept every job that comes his way. The Europeans want to go to a mill on the outskirts of the city. One of them asks him to drive, “Straight there, as quickly as possible!” The request for speed is completely unnecessary. Hassan’s livelihood depends on the fact that he drives one of the fastest tuk-tuk’s in Dhaka.

Tuk-tuks may only have three wheels, but they also have exceptionally loud horns. On the streets of Bangladesh, a vehicle’s horn is almost as important as its engine: the louder the better.
Beep Beep!
goes Hassan’s horn, telling pedestrians and other traffic to get out of the way, his tuk-tuk is coming through, and fast! A pleasant breeze takes the edge off the scorching heat, making the palm trees the tuk-tuk is driving past start to sway. The palm trees are growing in small gardens in front of rows of white painted houses. Are we still in Bangladesh? Yes. But Hassan’s tuk-tuk is speeding through one of the most affluent parts of Dhaka, known as Dhanmondi.

Around 14 million people live in and around Dhaka. And at least half of them live in slums. Bangladesh is always portrayed the same way by the media, as a country suffering from floods, poor living conditions and hunger. But Bangladesh is also home to beaches, national parks, and mountains and forests where Bengal tigers can still be found. Not far from Dhanmondi, the view from the tuk-tuk is dramatically different: a sprawling slum with shoddily built factories lurking in the background like huge shadow puppets. Most of them are textile factories, as the region surrounding Dhaka specialises in textile production.

Hassan is taking his European passengers to visit one of these factories. In fact, the bideshi are heading to the very same factory where
our
polyester yarn is being treated. A whole lorry load of yarn was transported from Chittagong to Dhaka four days ago, to be turned into fleece material. Even though it’s daytime and the factory is vast, it’s dark and sticky inside the building. A rhythmic clicking and clacking sound fills the enormous production room, where a few workers move deftly between the mechanical looms. These vast machines work exactly like hand-operated looms: rows of threads are stretched lengthways and are alternately moved up and down so that a shuttle carrying a cross-thread can be pushed through. The woven threads are then combed to create small loops in the fabric, which are then trimmed, leaving multiple tiny, soft bristles. These bristles are then scoured in order to open up the fibres and make the fleece fluffy and soft. All the trapped air between the fibres works as an excellent insulator. When it’s finished, the newly produced fleece material is rolled up into 40 kilogram bolts.

Forty-five minutes later, Hassan drops off his passengers at the factory. Usually he would charge the bideshi four or five times the standard fare, but unluckily for him, a guard at the factory takes care of all taxi payments and he knows exactly how much the fare should be. On the up side, Hassan receives a new fare straight away. But instead of people, he’s transporting rolls of fleece. The cabin and the luggage rack are loaded up by four workers from the factory, and the tuk-tuk groans under the weight of it all. While Hassan and the guards watch the taxi being loaded up with bolts of fleece, the owner of the textile factory arrives in his brand new Mercedes Benz. The guard closest to Hassan says, “Life’s only easy for factory owners, politicians and generals. There are no good jobs for anyone else! Why does Allah let this happen?” Hassan just shrugs and gets into his tuk-tuk. He doesn’t disagree with the guard exactly, but he does think that not all bad jobs are equally ‘bad’. Being a guard, for example – he believes – is a fairly good job, for a ‘bad’ job. True, the pay isn’t great, but all you have to do is stand around, drink tea, chat with people and tell off the workers if they’re late or disruptive. The place he’s about to drive to now is where the
really
‘bad’ jobs are – the fabric dyeing factory. He gets into his tuk-tuk and gives it some gas.

The drive to the dyeing factory isn’t a particularly nice journey. He passes slums and run-down factories that have suffered badly from the heavy monsoon rain. Whole floors of the factories are still flooded, and the road is littered with water-filled potholes. It’s a very bumpy ride. When he arrives, the guards make sure Hassan doesn’t get to see much of the factory or what goes on there. Really, you just have to take a look at the water coming out of the drains at the back of the factory to find out. Sometimes it’s red, other days it’s blue or green, whatever colour the factory is using under the cover of darkness. The local water supply is poisoned by the chemicals that this factory, and others, are dumping directly into rivers and drains. Just washing in the water here can make people sick. The only relatively safe drinking water comes from underground wells, but during the monsoon season, overspill from the rivers can contaminate the wells.

Despite the guards’ secrecy, Hassan knows what really happens in the huge dyeing workshop. Someone from his town told him. Inside are lots of tanks the size of small swimming pools. They are filled with lime, toxic bleaches and a variety of dyes. First the fabric is bleached to make it really white, so that the dyed colour will be really bright. Usually, the fabric is transported into the tanks of dye by machine, but the workers – often children – frequently have to put their bare arms into the machines to sort out blockages. The workers then climb into the tanks of poisonous dyes and stamp on the fabric with their bare feet. After being dyed, the fabric is hung up to dry on washing lines that are hundreds of metres long.

Fleece material gets a final extra treatment. It’s pulled through a tank filled with a solvent to make sure that bobbles don’t form on the fibres later on.

15 September 2005: 7:45am

Hassan is back at the dyeing factory with his tuk-tuk. Five freshly-dyed rolls of fleece are loaded onto his taxi. One roll, which is smaller than all the others, is bright red. Once everything’s been loaded up, Hassan drives his tuk-tuk through the factory gate and heads towards the Bangladesh Garni International (BGI) textile factory.

At the same time, outside the BGI textile factory, hundreds of seamstresses are waiting to start work. The doors will open in ten minutes. It’s quite difficult for most of the seamstresses to make sure they arrive on time, as many don’t have watches, and there are no clocks on the streets. Hassan reaches the factory just before half past eight. The gates open and he drives in. Just as the gate is closing again, a worker slips through. It is 17-year-old Taslima, who dashes into the factory and races up the stairs to her floor. One of the guards shouts after her: “You wretched toad! Next time I’ll slam the door in your face!” That’s what it’s usually like here: the young seamstresses – all between 16 and 30 years old – are not treated kindly by the management.

Taslima works on the second floor where over 80 sewing machines stand in two long rows. She settles herself at her workstation right in the middle. This is where she will sit for the next eight to twelve hours doing nothing but sewing. There’s already a stack of pre-cut fleece pieces piled behind her: for the last two days her department has been trying to fulfil a massive order for fleece body warmers. She takes the back section of a fleece and places the right hand front section, with a pocket already sewn into it, on top.
Tack, tack, tack, tack
, she’s already stitched the shoulder. She sews the pieces together down one side.
Tack, tack, tack, tack.
And now the same for the left hand side . . . Taslima’s glad to be able to work at a sewing machine. For the first half of the year she was only a sewing assistant. This meant she had to help five seamstresses, but was only paid half of what they were. She learnt quickly however, and when a seamstress from her group left – suddenly she had a sewing machine of her own.

Tack, tack, tack, tack
. Taslima sews the collar on, and then sews up the bottom of the fleece. The zip is the final piece to be sewn in. The first of the countless fleeces that she will make today is finished. No one has even told her off for being late! Sometimes, when a seamstress is late for work they dock her wages, but Taslima has been lucky today. The workshop is packed, badly lit and there’s barely any fresh air. As the monsoon season has just come to an end, there’s water everywhere. It smells of mould and it’s unbearably hot. The mere effort of breathing makes you break into a sweat, and if you’re working hard, the sweat runs in small rivers down your back. By the second or third fleece, Taslima’s hands are working automatically. In her mind she flees this dark, sticky room and runs back to her family. They live outside in the countryside, a three-hour drive away by minibus. Every two or three months she gets a couple of days off so she can travel home to visit them. Often when she’s there the whole community gather at her uncle’s house to watch the only television in the village. In Bangladesh there are approximately six televisions for every hundred people, and in the countryside that statistic is even lower. Whole villages watch TV together – it’s a social event. Bizarrely, up to three quarters of airtime is taken up by advertising. It’s insane to think that so many adverts are shown in a country where over half the population live on less than €1.50 euros (around £1 pound) a day, and will never be able to afford new cars, mobile phones, posh mustard or designer cosmetics.

On the other hand, public television channel BTV shows lots of interesting programmes, including Taslima’s favourite show, a cartoon series called
Meena
.
Meena
is loved by girls and young women across Bangladesh. The 10-year-old protagonist, Meena, is a brave and outgoing young woman. She likes going to school, is the smartest member of her family and fights the oppression of women in Bangladesh. She campaigns against young girls getting married, and raises awareness about issues such as the lack of education that women are given, or the fact that girls are rarely taken to a doctor when they’re ill. Girls and women usually watch TV on their own. If any men are about, they usually complain about what the women are watching. They don’t like programmes like
Meena
. They want their women to stay at home, obey their husbands, and if they
must
work, to hand over their wages with no questions asked.

Low Pay, High Risk

11/12 April 2005

In the middle of the night, a nine-storey textile manufacturing company collapses in Savar, a suburb of Dhaka. The building must have been poorly constructed, as it had only been completed a few months previously. The rescue teams who come to help don’t have any proper rescue equipment. Instead they have to search for the trapped workers using just their hands. Tragically, this results in a death toll of 61, with over 100 workers seriously injured.

But why is the number of casualties so high? In Bangladesh, there are frequently no working emergency exits at factories. The majority of the 3,000 factories that produce goods for export, such as my fleece body warmer, do not meet legal safety requirements. Most factories only have one entrance and exit, which is closed during working hours so that no one can sneak in or out. With crowded rooms, bad lighting, and poor safety procedures, is it any wonder that there are so many major accidents in the manufacturing industry? Over the last decade, official accident logs suggest that hundreds of textile workers have been killed and thousands have been badly injured, but the real figures could be even higher. And these numbers don’t take into account minor injuries, for which there are no records.

Around two million people work in the textile industry, and 90 per cent of them are young women under the age of 25. They have to work up to 100 hours a week! In Europe, the average full-time working week is only 41.6 hours long. In Bangladesh in 2010, the national minimum wage was raised to 3000 taka (around €19.80 euros/£16.00 pounds) per month. Despite this, the majority of the average seamstresses’ wages is still spent on rent. In order to support their families, textile workers must work overtime, and lots of it. However they are rarely fully compensated for the overtime they do, and sometimes they aren’t paid for it at all. Often, the only bonus is that they get to keep their job. On top of working long hours, female workers are frequently harassed and sometimes even beaten by their supervisors. This is why they keep striking. They want better treatment in the workplace, and a higher minimum wage, one that they and their families can live on. At the same time, the factory owners are feeling the pressure of worldwide competition. They are determined to keep trying to achieve the impossible: to make better quality clothing for less and less money.

15 September 2005: 1:00pm

Tack, tack, tack, tack!
Men have the final word at Taslima’s factory too. The seamstresses aren’t allowed to stand up without permission from a male supervisor. They’re not allowed to go to the toilet without permission. They’re not even allowed to talk! The seamstresses are constantly being harassed – and today the supervisors are particularly angry. But why?
Tack, tack, tack, tack
. After a million stitches – or that’s what it feels like to Taslima – comes the long-awaited announcement of the lunch break. “Half an hour, and not a second longer!” cry the supervisors. The workers leave their desks and gather into small groups. Everyone eats and talks at the same time. A message is passed from group to group, “Everyone working on the fleece body warmer job has to have them finished by the end of the day. No one is allowed home until the order is complete!”
Oh no
, Taslima thinks to herself, throwing her leftover rice and vegetables onto to the floor in anger. Meanwhile, many women make use of their short lunch break to queue up for the toilet. They don’t know when they’ll get another chance to go.