It wasn't until 1972 that the term "informal sector" emerged in the development scene. Since then the phrase has continued to gain traction as a central theme in the development discourse. The Labour Welfare Foundation Act 2006 defines informal sector as "types of non-government sector where workers' work, condition of work, etc., are not recognised or controlled by existing labour laws and related policies and where there is very limited scope for employed workers to be organised".

In Bangladesh the sector has come to have a unique significance as a driver of economic growth in a country where job opportunities are severely lacking and human development lags behind. There are nearly not enough jobs available for all in the formal sector nor is the pool of skilled workers large enough so that they can even consider the formal sector as an option.

In South Asia, the informal economy stands at 80 to 90 percent of the labour force and in Bangladesh the figure is estimated to be a whopping 87 percent according to the 2010 Labour Force Survey. Constituting an overwhelming portion of the labour force in the country, the informal sector plays a dominant role in economic activities and contribution to GDP in Bangladesh. In terms of percentage of GDP some of the major sectors of informal economic activity in Bangladesh are agriculture, wholesale and retail trade, fishing, and construction.

The streets of Dhaka are abuzz with informal economic activity. The city is a microcosm of informal employment where hundreds of thousands migrate to from rural areas every year in search of jobs. From urban street vendors and domestic help to garbage collectors and rickshaw pullers people in the informal sector are a vital source of economic lifeline in our daily lives. These are autonomous, self-realised human beings generating economic output: hawkers, tea stall owners, phone top-up businesses, fish and vegetable vendors, day labourers.

Little do we realise it but it is the informal economy that mainly thrives on the incredible resilience and innovation of the millions employed in this sector. These are people with little to no education who are self-taught in the art of repairing your phones and laptops, fixing your internet router and replacing your dead electrical outlet.

But despite the invaluable goods and services provided by the informal sector the value of their labour often goes unnoticed and their work unrecognised. The vulnerabilities associated with the informal sector stem from the lack of social protection of these workers and the abhorrent state of labour rights because their work is not recorded, protected or regulated by the state.

Take the construction industry for example. Although the industry is part of the "formal" sector temporary construction workers who do the informal task of arduous manual labour in often Dickensian working conditions are not covered by the Labour Act (Amendment) 2013. In 2016, there were 182 casualties on construction sites of which 85 resulted in death and 97 were injuries.

In mid-March this year, a 36-metre-long girder weighing 70 tonnes fell from the under-construction Moghbazar-Malibagh flyover killing a temporary hourly worker and seriously injuring two (an LGED engineer and a driver of a concrete mixer truck) both of whom lost a leg. Although the temporary worker was actually a carpenter by profession hired to allegedly control traffic during a girder installation the accident at the construction site was yet another manifestation of the dangerously precarious working conditions in construction sites. It is still not known whether the family of the deceased and the injured persons of the Moghbazar-Malibagh flyover accident have received any amount of compensation.

In the first quarter of 2017 alone some 294 workers died while 101 were injured in workplace related accidents. Of them 68 dead and 45 injured belonged to the formal sector while the figures for the informal sector were 226 and 56 respectively.

Due to a lack of awareness it is a little known fact that the Labour Act does not actually require a worker to show papers related to proof of employment in order to claim compensation from his/her employer. All that has to be proved is that the injury was a result of an accident at the workplace. 

Any discussion about the informal sector in Bangladesh would be incomplete without a mention of the tea industry which was started by the British in the mid-19th century. Workers in tea cultivation – spread throughout the hilly zones on the eastern part mainly in four districts (Sylhet, Moulvibazar, Habiganj and Chittagong) – are the epitome of bonded labour in modern day Bangladesh. These workers remain tied to forced labour generation after generation.

Brought to Bangladesh from India more than a century ago to work in tea gardens in slavery-like working conditions these workers have no legal claim over the land they work in because it belongs to the tea estates. Seventy-five percent of more than 300,000 plantation workers in Bangladesh are women. Tea garden workers who depend on tea cultivation for food, water, shelter and other basic needs are considered to be among the most deprived sections of organised labour.

Although the Labour Act provides some protections to tea workers its enforcement is extremely weak. Articles 95-97 of the Labour Act requires all tea estates to have medical facilities but they are either non-existent or are not well-equipped. It doesn't come as a shock when you take into account the fact that some of the basic needs of tea garden workers aren't even ensured since most of them don't have contracts with their employers. Unlike workers in other sectors, tea plantation workers don't have the option to "choose" their profession since it is deemed hereditary, as a result of which they remain stuck in a vicious cycle of bonded labour, misery and poverty.

Given the enormity of the informal sector the immediate solution lies in rethinking the Labour Act.

According to Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmed, Executive Director, Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS), "The informal sector has not been defined properly. Workers without employment-related/contract documents or outside the realm of the Act, regardless of whether they are in the formal or informal sector, remain vulnerable which is why everyone needs to be brought under the purview of the Act. The law clearly says that no one can be employed without being provided such documents and this needs to be strictly implemented."

In addition, he says that setting up a standard for minimum wage is essential and so is the provision of employment ID cards across all sectors and registration of employment (e.g. Union Parishad). Most importantly, the exception clause, Article 1(4) of the Labour Act, needs to be repealed to include all those who remain left out of the purview of the Act. These major steps would help formalise around 80 percent of the entire labour sector.

Unless and until the bulk of the country's workforce gets due recognition for their economic output their rights will be further trampled upon and the cycle of poverty elongated. The high degree of informality of the labour sector is an opportunity to lift millions above the poverty line. For this, informal work needs to be valued for what it is and not just another form of cheap labour to be capitalised on by corporations.

The writer is a member of the editorial team, The Daily Star.