By Hsu Latt Phyu -Jun 17, 2024

Workers from He MeT Company Limited garment factory which located at Twin Thin Tike U Htun Nyo Street, A Lal village, Hlaing Thar Yar Township, Yangon said that their rights are being violated. 

The factory is owned by a Chinese national and manufacturing ever.me, page one and MO WOMAN brand fabrics with more than 1,000 workers.

The violations are forcing overtime on Sundays, denying overtime fees in most possible ways, forcing day laborers as the same with other workers with only 4,800 kyats, forcing more than 300 underage workers and forcing them the same as adults and hiding them when inspectors came.

Workers said that the garment factory is asking for excessive outputs, verbally abusing, forcing the pregnant workers to resign, not allowing social security and other benefits although workers contributed to. Therefore, they are looking for resolvent.

“A cavity with 45 people including the super is asked for 40 fabric per hour. The supervisors are rude as well. The super of line 4 and 6 is a man and he is verbally abusing the female excessively,” said a worker who don’t want to be named.

“The former line 6 super is taking in charge of line 11 and they cheated the list when they worked on line 6 by not informing the workers’ absent list to the employer but they take the worker’s salary for themselves for those absent days and I didn’t see any actions upon them,” the worker continued.

The employer forced the pregnant employee to making them to suffer. Workers does not receive the casual and medical leave that he is entitled to in the workplace, and even though they pays the social security fee every month, they are not entitled to it. In addition, daily allowance of 5,800 kyats and allowance bonus of 10,000 kyats are cut for taking a leave.

The workers say that the restrooms used by the more than 1,000 workers are not clean and that they are insulted by the cleaning workers. Because there is no mechanism to resolve labor disputes in the workplace, the workers are suffering a lot.

The workers requests are

1. The employer not to call overtime on Sudays

2. The employer to take action on the supervisors’ verbal abuses

3. The employer not to force the child labors as the same with adults

4. The employer to provide maintenance of the restrooms

5. The employer to allow legal leaves

6 The employer to take action on the insults of the janitorial workers.