Hanging by a thread: Bangladesh’s garment workers
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2020
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In March, Aafiyah was told the garment factory where she worked would be closing. And like many other garment workers, she was left destitute in the slums of Dhaka.
Bangladesh’s garment industry employs millions of workers, mainly women, who make clothes for high street brands in Europe and the US. Western retailers, who have seen sales plummet due to the pandemic, have cancelled or suspended more than 3 billion dollars’ worth of orders from Bangladeshi garment factories. Over a million jobs in the sector could now be at risk.
For Assignment, Caroline Bayley and Morshed Ali Khan hear Aafiyah’s story, and talk to factory owners and the British Retail Consortium about the huge challenges facing Bangladesh's main export industry.
Producer: Josephine Casserly
(Image: Women, wearing masks, work in a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Reuters/Mohammad Ponir Hossain)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This edition of assignment was made in a rather unusual way. |
| 0:04.0 | Although it comes from Bangladesh |
| 0:06.4 | and looks at the impact of the coronavirus pandemic |
| 0:09.6 | on the millions of people who work in the garment industry there, my producer Joe Kasseley and I |
| 0:15.3 | made it from our homes on either sides of London. Under normal circumstances we would have gone |
| 0:20.8 | out to Bangladesh, but obviously that's not possible at the moment. |
| 0:25.0 | We couldn't have made it though without the help of Mochad Ali Khan, |
| 0:29.0 | a Bangladeshi journalist who's been following the story from Dhaka. |
| 0:36.0 | When I was in the factory, I couldn't understand anything about this unseen disease everyone was talking about. |
| 0:42.0 | Arfea, not her real name, is a garment worker in Bangladesh. |
| 0:47.0 | Her words are voiced by a producer. |
| 0:50.0 | They gave us soap and water to wash our hands and masks to wear, but I could not work out why. |
| 0:56.1 | It was so hot in the factory and wearing the mask was like suffocating. |
| 1:01.7 | I only wore them when the big bosses came for their inspections. |
| 1:05.8 | Then when they left I took it off and took deep breaths. |
| 1:26.4 | This was a sewing machine operator in one of Bangladesh's many garment factories, a job she'd been doing for 14 years. But the deadly coronavirus was now sweeping across the world. I'm Caroline Bailey, and on assignment on the BBC World Service |
| 1:32.3 | this week, we're looking at the impact of COVID. and on the |
| 1:33.0 | assignment on the BBC World Service this week, we're looking at the impact of COVID-19 |
| 1:36.0 | on the millions of people working in Bangladesh's clothing factories, |
| 1:40.0 | suppliers to the global fashion industry. |
| 1:43.0 | On the floor where I worked, there were five rows of machines |
| 1:47.0 | 80 or 90 in a single row, |
... |
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