THE garment sector is in the news again and this time for the very wrong reasons. Violence had run into the second day on Sunday in the Ashulia industrial area, which saw the region turn into a virtual battlefield with the police and garment workers locked in pitched clashes…. And this in spite of the assurance of all the parties that normalcy would be restored…. Production in almost 350 factories in that area had to be suspended as a consequence of the violence that initially involved workers of one garment factory and was subsequently joined by hundreds [of] others from other factories, following rumours that a co-worker had died due to torture by the security staff of that factory. Reportedly the ‘dead worker’ was in the custody of the police, having been handed over to them for some offence. The consequence has been not only loss of production in these factories but death of at least one and injury to hundreds, police personnel included, and damage to … public and private transport. The highway traffic was disrupted too….

It is very disconcerting to see such [a] situation arise in the garment sector that has been enjoying a peaceful environment for a long time; and it is hard to rationalise the workers’ behaviour, because we find it very difficult to believe that workers would set upon their own factories without bothering to verify the truth. Therefore, will we be wrong in suggesting that the matter was deliberately engineered to create disruption in the sector, which had been performing very well in spite of the political heat … in the country…. We also fail to understand why ‘discontentment’ in one factory would be allowed to spill over in the entire area. And where was the factory administration who apparently failed to scotch the rumour? It speaks of a poor worker-management relationship. And where was the industrial police whose job it is to prevent unrest in the area from spreading?...— (May 14)