Tonight will be a time when Muslims all across the world remember the Creator in all the humility of submission to Him. Shab-e-Barat, in that very broad sense of the meaning, is but a reassertion of the belief that our fortunes, indeed the course life takes at every given point, is what Allah wills it to be. And Allah is all-forgiving and all-knowing. Because he is, it is for every Muslim, wherever he might be, to seek His forgiveness for all the sins that have been committed and in equal measure seek to know the path to truth in light of the Islamic faith.
Against this background of forgiveness comes the knowledge that Shab-e-Barat is also a night when believers seek the Lord's blessings for the year that is to be. These blessings are of a spiritual sort and therefore far removed from the materialistic conceptions some of us might mistakenly have as we ask Allah to fulfill our needs. It follows, therefore, that our needs are those that strive toward a more concrete understanding of our place in the universal scheme of things. And they essentially relate, fallible as we are, to thoughts of the good deeds that we do or are supposed to do in the course of our life. We seek the Almighty's blessings in a number of ways, but those ways again converge around the thought that what we seek is centred around religiosity. Tonight we set aside the banal and the worldly and simply recall the fundamental nature of belief in God and His universe.
On this night of forgiveness and blessings, it is not false celebrations that we indulge in through a misuse of resources. It is a night of happiness, but happiness of the kind which takes us a little closer to the Almighty. As the twilight approaches, we ready ourselves for a night of prayer, of self-examination as it were, all directed at a scaling of the heights of belief. Let tonight be one of a rediscovery of the self, of the thought that while this life matters, there is too the hereafter that must not be lost sight of.
The Ministry of Food and Disaster Management has taken an initiative to provide food items at fair prices to garment and knit workers. An MoU is likely to be signed soon with the BGMEA and BKMEA leaders to this end. This is undoubtedly welcome news which could not have come a day later. We believe this will ease the plight of the workers to some extent given the continued inflationary pressures compounded by soaring food prices before the month of Ramadan. But does fair price mean affordable price?
We hope it would not be a seasonal relief to fend off the pressure of prices during Ramadan, rather it would continue all the year round especially until such time as their salaries are raised from the current minimum of Tk 3,000. Our understanding is that the three-year cap on their salary increase ends in 2013. In the meanwhile, though, the costs of living have gone up so much so that these cannot even be affordable to middle income people. Among the basic needs, housing is crucial and the rents and electricity charge have skyrocketed. Under the circumstances, it is desirable that negotiations for arriving at a sustainable living wage for the workers will be initiated.
There is no gainsaying the fact that garment export is one of the strongest pillars of our economy and therefore, in keeping with the pivotal importance of the sector, matching steps must get underway to ensure better wages and good working environment for the RMG workers.
Frequent unrest in this sector has a disastrous impact not only on this industry but also on the economy as a whole. Since lower pay has been one of the persistent reasons behind such unrest, we urge all concerned quarters including the garment owners and the government to address this issue immediately.
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