Health Facilities and Safety Issues of Female Garments Workers: A Study at Savar Area, Dhaka

Abstract

As most of the female workers in Bangladesh tend to low educational qualification due to drop out from school in early-stage to support their families and they have a lack of awareness about health and safety issues especially many of those workers still do not get pregnancy care although it is the prime concern for women. They are very often harassed by co-workers in the factory and face social trolls due to work in the garments. This study aims to investigate the health care facilities and safety hazards of female workers in the garments industry in Bangladesh. Primary data are collected (female workers) from different garments at Savar area through the questionnaire survey method. In this study, descriptive statistics, contingency analysis, and binary logistic analysis are used to examine the factors’ effect on female workers’ social situation and health facilities. Results reveal that about 93.6% of females have come from the village and a large number (43.9%) is a young adult (25-34 years). About 32.8% female has trolled socially due to work in the garments. Contingency analysis has been revealed that educational status, family types, educational status of the husband, occupation of husband, reason of job, spend income in own way, social status for doing the job, inequality in higher rank and reason of dropout from a job have a significant association with the social troll of the female garments worker. From the binary logistic regression analysis, it has been found that family types, husband education, and occupation, reason of job, spend income in own way, inequality in higher rank and dropout from a job have a significant effect on social troll of the female garments worker. Garments authority and the government should take effective programs and enforce labor law for improving health facilities and safety issues in Bangladesh for female workers.