Financial Times

No seasonal cheer for MFA-hit garment workers
Crying and pleading for relief, a 45-year-old garments worker and mother of two children last week described how the end to textile quotas shattered her career and virtually drove her to the streets.

"Please help us. I am struggling to survive. I don't have a job. I am still trying to settle debts due before I lost my job," Sunita Kumudini told an audience of workers, trade unionists and top manufacturers in Colombo that gathered to discuss a study by Oxfam on the one-year impact on the Sri Lankan garment industry after the end of textile quotas.

The Oxfam report says that at least 15 factories have shut and a total of over 3000 workers have lost there jobs this year. Another 22 factories are likely to close. While few were paid any form of compensation, many factories closed down abruptly without adequate notice to the workers. Almost all these factories had huge EPF defaults while some had not paid earned wages.
It said no one is concerned about this situation and the abdication of responsibility by the stakeholders is alarming.

Kumudini said she worked for A.J. Milton & Co and one day in June 2005, the factory gates were closed and workers told the company had closed. No salaries were paid and "at 45 years I can't get another job." Her husband is ill and cannot work.

Badrika Chandani, 36 years and unmarried, worked for 17 years at Cadilac Garments when she was laid off on the MFA issue. She now works at a small unit earning Rs 4,000 a month which is hardly enough to look after her mother and others at home.

The report said the threat of MFA has been used by manufacturers to push for weakening the protection for workers. "Sadly, government and other international safety mechanisms including the buyers' compliance efforts haven't yet managed to address ways of responsible phasing out," Oxfam noted.Oxfam said it is clear that the industry restructuring is happening with closures, worker shedding, mergers and acquisition as well as a trend towards more subcontracting. All these are bound to cause job displacement and job insecurity. But no programme has been put in place to provide social safety for these vulnerable workers, it said.

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