By Hsu Latt Phyu - Nov 29, 2023
Workers at the BOHUA FASHION garment factory, which sews Sinsay brand women's and children's shirts, told that their rights are being violated by not letting them entitled to benefits, direct ruled by a Chinese woman, forcing overtime unfairly, not paying some of the overtime wages and intimidated while appointing tasks.
The factory, which is owned by a Chinese national, has been opened at Ministry Road, Shwe Lin Ban Industrial Zone, Hlaing Thar Yar. It is operating with more than 200 workers and does not have a labor union.
Day laborers are hired in the factory and they are facing difficulties as they are forced to work all night and all light overtimes, asked to work many workloads if there are works and fired if there are no orders.
The worker said that they are having a hard time as they were asked for 50 garments per hour, and if the standard was not met, they are cursed rudely and said, "Quit if you can’t”.
"If we don't meet the standards they asked for, Chinese woman calls a meeting where she yells at us to throw away the cloths. If the cloths have errors, they only fire the workers. The normal working hours are from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm. They let us go back at 3:30 pm as there were no orders the previous day. After a week when the fabrics are arrived, they asked us to work until 5:30 am, but we didn't get paid,” the worker said.
It is also said that on calling overtime, the workers were forced to work all night without asking their consent and intimidate to fire if they refused.
“Furthermore, we are not allowed to enjoy casual and medical leaves, if we miss a day of work, 5,600 kyats of daily wages, 30,000 kyats of attendance bonus; a total of 35,600 kyats will be deducted. The overtime fee was also reduced from 1,400 to 1,200 kyats. We also want to get it back. As the workers go to ask paracetamol from the office as there is no medic clinic, they said they don’t have anything. Workers have old social security card but as they don’t extend those and make news the workers who paid for social security suffers. And the Chinese Woman, Daw Su Su Hlaing from MR, line 3 super and line 5 super always threatens the workers with the military if they asked for something,” said an unsatisfied worker.
The workers want the factory to reform the above violations and want to request not to forced overtime for free, to ask their consents, not to threat with the military, to provide a medic clinic and a nurse and not to intimidate them.
