More than two and a half years ago, the government took a Tk 1,500 crore safety net programme for the workers who lost their jobs owing to the devastating impact of Covid-19.

It targeted to disburse Tk 3,000 a month among 10 lakh retrenched workers in the export-oriented garment, leather and footwear sectors for a three-month period till the financial year of 2021-22.

The scheme promised to provide some respite to the laid-off, disabled and insolvent workers since the pandemic-induced economic crisis has left them without regular income streams or with reduced earnings. But in reality, the initiative did not turn out as viable.

As of October 2022, the labour and employment ministry was able to disburse only Tk 9 crore among 9,784 workers, saying it is not getting expected number of "legal beneficiaries" having proper documents.

As of October 2022, the labour and employment ministry was able to disburse only Tk 9 crore among 9,784 workers

However, rights bodies and experts termed the scheme as a "failure", saying one of the reasons the scheme did not succeed was workers' associations were not included in implementing the initiative.

Any worker, including lactating mothers, who were employed in the garment and leather sectors up till February 2020 was eligible to receive money from the fund, which was formed on the basis of financial support from the European Union and the German government.

"The scheme should have been implemented quickly but it has not been possible because of a lack of a proper database of workers," said Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmmed, a former executive director of the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies.

He saw negligence on the part of both factory owners and the government's implementing agency.

"The factory owners don't want to acknowledge the issue of sacking workers since it will hurt their goodwill and may prevent them from accessing various support of the government. So, factory owners did not provide the information properly."

A majority of the workers who were rendered jobless were employed at small and informal garment factories, which have been kept largely out of the scheme.

Ahmmed, a specialist on workers' activities at the International Labour Organisation's South Asia region, points out that India has formulated a central database during the pandemic and such a directory is needed for any kind of natural calamities.

Mohammad Hatem, executive president of the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA), said the disbursement did not reach its target as it was difficult to find the real retrenched workers.

"We tried our best but could not disburse the fund among enough workers. Only 110 to 120 factories were able to provide the beneficiary list. But the number of the workers who lost jobs might be much higher."

He said the BKMEA was asked to provide the beneficiary list of the factories that had less than 500 workers. Other "complex conditions" were also there.

A major condition was to find out the 'sacked workers", he said.

"Usually, we don't fire them. Even if some of them were fired, they might be recruited by other factories," he said.

Hatem said the authorities could have disbursed the fund using a list of workers who received reduced payments throughout the pandemic or as per recommendations of factory owners.

The entrepreneur described the per person allocation of Tk 3,000 as a very low amount.

Salauddin Swapan, general secretary of the Bangladesh Garments Workers Unity Council, said the government should include the platforms working to protect the rights of workers in order to prepare a proper beneficiary list.

Faruque Hassan, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said it did not send any list of beneficiaries to the authorities.

"Truly, there is no such unemployment in our factories. We searched for such names but did not find any."

He said at the onset of the pandemic, some of the workers left factories as production was shut for nearly two months after the government enforced a countrywide lockdown to tackle the spread of the deadly virus.

"But they have been reemployed."

Md Abu Ashrif Mamud, acting director for planning, development and statistics at the labour department, said it could not disburse the fund due to a lack of a list of proper beneficiaries.

"If the number of jobless persons was 100, we were able to disburse the fund among 10 persons, who had legal ID cards."

The fund is disbursed directly to the mobile financial service accounts of workers.

"Everything is happening through a digital process and this is definitely a fair system. In the last two and half years, we have found discrepancies between the workers' NID cards and the ID card provided by their employers," said Mamud.

Possibly, he explained, the workers found the job using false information about their age or other information but the factories did not verify them. But when the factories tried to upload their information on the system to help workers claim the benefit under the scheme, they failed.

The government has added jute and frozen food sectors to the list of beneficiary sectors, he said. "This is an ongoing project and hopefully, we will be able to disburse more in the coming days."