On average, labour courts take ten times more time to pass a judgment than they are legally allowed.
This astonishing figure came up in a study done by Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST), which analysed 80 compensation cases, all related to workplace injuries and deaths, litigated by the organisation.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star’s Google News channel. It took, on average, 601 days for labour courts to pass a judgment on cases of workplace injury or death, even though the legal time-limit is 60 days, found the report titled “‘Tire them out’: Challenges of litigating compensation claims under Bangladesh Labour Act 2006”.
The labour court of Chattogram took the longest — 1,280 days on average — to dispose of cases, the study found.
Such excruciatingly long waits also often come to no fruition because employers routinely defy court orders, and the workers have to then file criminal cases to obtain what is rightfully theirs — and so, the legal process starts all over again.
On average, employers took a further 475 days following the verdict to hand over the money, found the report. This meaning a worker or a worker’s family has to wait several years before they get their dues.
All this for paltry sums that range from Tk 2 lakh (for injury) to Tk 2.50 lakh (for death).
For cases filed before 2016, when the labour law was amended, this sum was between Tk 1 lakh and Tk 1.25 lakh.
Twenty-eight-year-old Jewel, for example, had to wait four years to get a positive verdict. Even then, he has not been able to get his employer to pay his dues.
In December 2013, the construction worker slipped off a flimsy ladder while carrying 60kg of sand. He had been working on the moulding of the rooftop of a house in Badda.
The fall left him permanently paralysed from the waist down. The doctors told him that he would be unable to walk or do any manual labour for the rest of his life — a form of death sentence for a young construction worker.
Jewel had been working for the house’s owner Hazi Liakat Ali when the accident happened. Jewel sued him for compensation in June 2014, seeking Tk 215,000 in damages.
After a drawn-out four-year legal battle, Jewel was handed a verdict in his favour — but to no avail. The court had ordered Ali to deposit Tk 2 lakh within two months, but as of 2021, Jewel has still not received a single taka from his former employer.
BLAST then initiated a criminal case against Jewel’s employer to recover the money, but the case is still pending in court.
“The Bangladesh Labour Act relies too heavily on the willingness (rather than ability) of employers to pay compensation to claimants. Repeated refusal to pay compensation, including when ordered by courts, appears to be commonplace — with little to no practical consequences for such non-compliance,” stated the report, authored by BLAST’s Taqbir Huda.
Major reasons behind courts taking so long to pass verdicts include an inadequate number of judges, backlog of cases, difficulty obtaining documentary evidence and crucially, large distances between the workers and the courts.
“The average distance between the claimant’s upazila [subdistrict] and the Labour Court, in which the compensation claim had to be filed, was 201km,” found the report.
“In 50 of the 80 cases, the court and the claimant’s residence were located in different divisions… Claimants are required to travel hundreds of kilometres, incurring huge transport costs and travel time.”
The time and the distance force workers and their families to settle out of court, it added.
Fifteen-year-old Md Rubel was working in the Three Star Fan Factory situated in Mirhajirbagh of Jatrabari in 2007, when a fire broke out, killing the boy.
Rubel’s mother filed a case the next year.
During the trial, the employer did not even bother to submit a written statement to contest the case, while Rubel’s mother told the court that all the company had paid was Tk 10,000 as compensation.
After two long years, the Second Labour Court Dhaka pronounced a judgment on January 12, 2011, ruling that a remaining Tk 90,000 had to be paid to Rubel’s mother within 30 days.
The employer ignored the court order, forcing BLAST to initiate a criminal case.
This prompted the factory to offer Rubel’s parents an out-of-court settlement of Tk 60,000.
They could accept this now or the company could continue prolonging the legal battle and keep them penniless. Rubel’s parents took the money and withdrew legal action against the employer.
At a virtual launching ceremony of the report, Honorary Executive Director of BLAST Sara Hossain stated, “The findings of the report show that when victims of injustice, such as those of workplace deaths and injuries, seek justice in labour courts, they are subjected to another set of injustices, whereby continuing the court case becomes an extremely costly endeavour.
“This is precisely why an employment injury insurance scheme is the need of the hour, so victims have a speedy recourse to compensation.”
BLAST Chairman Dr Kamal Hossain said, “The Labour Act was thus enacted to ensure workers’ rights. However, after all these years, we still see that recovering compensation is not easy. Employers mostly disregard the compensation orders of courts.
“The pendency and delay of cases in courts disappoint the victims in getting justice. We need to amend our existing law by removing the fixed compensation amount, and increasing [the number of] courts and judges.”
AKM Nasim, deputy country director of the Solidarity Center Bangladesh, said, “The findings of the report, while harrowing, confirm something we have known for years — that the compensation framework is miserably failing workers. The labour law requires immediate reform.”Wajedul Islam Khan, general secretary of Bangladesh Trade Union Centre and joint secretary general of Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies, said, “The duty to compensate should also extend to those who benefit from the profit derived from the workers’ labour, alongside the employer.”
