Workers observing May Day amid Savar gloom

Hundreds of workers are observing the 127th anniversary of the historic May Day across Bangladesh with a vow to ensure highest punishment to those responsible for the heavy loss of lives in the recent Savar tragedy.

Many were carrying placards declaring the Raza Plaza collapse incident a ‘murder’.

Some of them were also holding hammers, shovel and other equipment used by people who work every day for survival.

A procession brought out from Bangabandhu Avenue at around 7am under the banner of Sramik League terminated at the same place after touching Paltan, Dainik Bangla intersection and Balaka intersection in Motijheel area.

Thousands of workers also rallied in the adjacent areas of Bangabandhu Stadium around the same time.

The Bangladesh Trade Union Center organised a rally around 9am at the Central Shaheed Minar.

Speaking at the programmes, worker leaders vented anger over the failure to bring the local MP of Savar and the UNO to justice over the incident.

They also demanded that the government confiscate the properties of the owners of the collapsed building and the factories housed in it, and pay off the victims with that.

Similar programmes are being held in Ashulia, Tejgaon, Demra, Kanchpur, Abdullahpur and Tongi industrial areas.

On this day in 1886, 10 workers were killed in police firing near the Hay Market in the US city of Chicago. Those killed were workers campaigning for an 8-hour daily work shift instead of a 12-hour one.

The authorities were finally forced to accept the workers' demand, leading to the universal acceptance of the eight-hour shift.

An international working class rally on July 14, 1889 in Paris declared May 1 as the International Workers Solidarity Day in memory of the workers who died in Chicago. Since then, May 1 is observed globally as the International Workers Solidarity Day.

Since the morning, the workers started hitting the streets of Paltan, Press Club, Bijoy Nagar, Motijheel, Gulistan, Bangabandhu Avenue, High Court intersection and Matsya Bhaban of the capital sporting red head-bands and waving red flags.

The May Day is being observed in Bangladesh this year barely a few days after the Rana Plaza collapse in Savar in which over 400 people, mostly readymade garment factory workers, have died so far.

That these workers were forced into the factories despite engineers declaring the Plaza unstable stresses the uncertainty of working conditions in Bangladesh's booming garment sector.

Only five months back in November last year, 112 workers were burned to death in a devastating fire at Ashulia’s Tazreen Fashions factory.