Chefs demand fixed pay structures
Chefs said they cook healthy dishes for people while their salaries hardly help them lead healthy lives
Chefs working at hotels and restaurants in the country have called for introducing fixed pay structures.
They also demanded regulations for ensuring job security.
The demands were announced at the Chef Unity Annual Conference organised by the Chef Unity Association of Bangladesh (CUAB) in Dhaka on Wednesday.
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Chefs from different local and international hotels and restaurants joined the event.
Sources in the tourism sector said there are one lakh chefs in Bangladesh. There are another 30 lakh people working in this sector.
Speakers at the conference said chefs are poorly paid in Bangladesh owing to the absence of any pay structure.
Talking to The Business Standard, Tony Khan, President of Chefs Development Society said many skilled chefs are leaving the country because they do not get proper wages, putting a bleak impact on the country's tourism sector.
"Bangladesh will need 10 lakh skilled workforce in the sector by 2025. Chefs are one of the key parts in this sector. So, they need to be trained up," he said adding that necessary regulations should be introduced for protecting the rights of the employees engaged in the tourism sector.
Khabir Uddin Ahmed, president of the Tourism Resort Industries Association of Bangladesh, said he will discuss the welfare issue with the authorities concerned.
There are 12 training institutions for chefs in Bangladesh for generating skilled workforce. Many youths get trained form these institutions every year, he said.
These centres trained up 2,500 people in the last one and a half years, and more 5,000 people will be trained by the next year, Khabir Uddin added.
Ahsan Habib, president of the Chef Unity Association of Bangladesh, however, said the number of training institutions and their outputs are not sufficient because more people are interested in it and want to take it as their profession.
"We (chefs) are deprived of proper facilities. We make hygienic food for people, but our salaries do not help us lead healthy lives," he said adding that the accommodation of chefs the hotel and restaurant owners provide is in no way hygienic.
