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Assignment: Hanging by a thread: Bangladesh’s garment workers

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Hanging by a thread: Bangladesh’s garment workers

07/05/2020 GMT

BBC World Service - Assignment, Hanging by a thread: Bangladesh’s garment workers

The devastating effect of the coronavirus pandemic on Bangladesh’s garment industry

Assignment investigates the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic on workers and factory owners in Bangladesh’s garment sector.

In March, Aafiyah was told the garment factory where she worked would be closing. And like many other garment workers, she was left destitute in the slums of Dhaka.
 
Bangladesh’s garment industry employs millions of workers, mainly women, who make clothes for high street brands in Europe and the US. Western retailers, who have seen sales plummet due to the pandemic, have cancelled or suspended more than 3 billion dollars’ worth of orders from Bangladeshi garment factories. Over a million jobs in the sector could now be at risk. 
 
For Assignment, Caroline Bayley and Morshed Ali Khan hear Aafiyah’s story, and talk to factory owners and the British Retail Consortium about the huge challenges facing Bangladesh's main export industry.
 
Producer: Josephine Casserly

(Image: Women, wearing masks, work in a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: Reuters/Mohammad Ponir Hossain)

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Hanging by a thread: Bangladesh’s garment workers

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