In the time of Coronavirus: Life, with less or nothing | The Business Standard
Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Economy
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • COVID-19
    • Bangladesh
    • Splash
    • Videos
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Infograph
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Thoughts
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Archive
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
    • Supplement
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard

Sunday
August 14, 2022

Sign In
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Economy
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • COVID-19
    • Bangladesh
    • Splash
    • Videos
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Infograph
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Thoughts
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Archive
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
    • Supplement
  • বাংলা
SUNDAY, AUGUST 14, 2022
Life, with less or nothing

Bangladesh

Inam Ahmed
11 May, 2020, 10:00 pm
Last modified: 12 May, 2020, 01:35 pm

Related News

  • New subvariant of Omicron detected in Jashore 
  • Bangladesh best in dealing with Covid in South Asia: Nikkei index
  • Covid deaths in Bangladesh almost 5x more than official stats: WHO 
  • No death from Covid for 14th straight day
  • Covid-19: Zero death, 7 cases reported in 24hrs

Life, with less or nothing

Almost three-fourths of the workforce have become jobless and another big portion have retained their jobs but without pay

Inam Ahmed
11 May, 2020, 10:00 pm
Last modified: 12 May, 2020, 01:35 pm
Photo: Salahuddin Ahmed/TBS
Photo: Salahuddin Ahmed/TBS

Sonia is a 25-year-old gym instructor in the city. Her small earnings could barely see her family of three including her mother and younger brother through, yet they could at least have three meals a day.

Then came the coronavirus pandemic and  her Dhanmondi gym shuttered down. It has been over 40 days since she is without a job.

Desperate, she started calling her gym clients Saturday, pleading.

One such call came to my colleague Jebun Nesa Alo.

"Apa, please apnara gym e ashen, na holey gym khulbey na. Amra chakri ferot pabo na. Amra na kheye achhi (Apa please come to the gym otherwise the doors will not open. We'll not get back our jobs. We are literally starving)," she said.

 But no one wants to take the risk. In the enclosed atmosphere of a gym, the virus would be more contagious.

Liza  (not her real name) is an ethnic woman who has worked for Persona in Dhanmondi since the very first days of the beauty care salon.

She is also out of a job now. In the time of pandemic, no one cares about getting their eye-brows plucked or having a pedicure.

"I have toiled all these years to build the brand of Persona. But when it closed, I did not get any salary. The owner said we will get some money to buy food. That money is yet to come," she said.

Liza lives with her brother in a rented house for Tk18,000.

"The house owner has threatened to throw me out," said Liza. "Only  yesterday, the management asked a few of the hair cutting section to join. But I am not one of those. I don't know hairdo."

"We could not give a penny to our girls in the last one month," said Kaniz Almas Khan, CEO of Persona.

Persona closed its shutter in March after paying full salary and in the next month a part, she said. 

But in the third month, it became difficult to continue paying as business completely dried up, she said.

"We will not be able to pay until getting a loan from the bank but the process is going on and it seems they will release the money only after Eid," she said.

In this situation, many of the skilled hand girls are switching the industry to survive during the crisis, she added. 

Liza and Sonia form part of the statistics that a think-tank SANEM came out with that says the current economic disruption is hurting the 20 million youth workers in Bangladesh.

And they also make up the 33 million people who will fall into poverty, thus taking the poverty rate to 40 percent. And that is counting the minimum threshold level at $1.9 a day per person or say Tk170 taka. If you raise it to $3.2 as a lower middle income poverty rate, Bangladesh already had 58 percent people below the poverty line.

But with the pandemic setting in, people have lost as much as 75 percent of their income a Brac study shows. Almost three-fourths of the workforce have become jobless and another big portion have retained their jobs but without pay.

And that is a big shock because Bangladesh had grittily come out of the so called basket case that it was once notoriously dubbed by Henry Kissinger. Its fight was focusing public spending on poverty reducing projects and the combined efforts of numerous NGOs who had supplied microcredit and training to millions across the country.

An opening of the economy helped boost investment and growth and in an unjust society where wealth is too unevenly spread, the benefits finally distilled downwards in the old-fashioned trickle-down development model.

People had money. People ate more. And soon, the advertisements changed in the media – they were no more of how to get fatter but how to slim down. The gyms and beauty salons proliferated and Lizas and Sonias found new vocations to make a living.

Now, the get-fatter advertisement days are again ahead. And like these two women, thousands have seen their incomes dwindle, by as much as 25 percent to even 50 percent or more.

This sudden loss of income has touched not only the blue-collar workers. Highly educated professionals like this doctor, who did not wish to be identified, have also been shocked with surprise pay cuts. She was living a comfortable life with her job at BIRDEM and her own practice.

But as the pandemic bit, she had to close her office. Patients had vanished. But more than that, she is a first-line doctor and that makes her more vulnerable to infection than any other doctors. So she had to shut down her regular evening office.

And only yesterday, she was surprised to find that BIRDEM had paid her 50 percent of her salary without any prior notice. All other doctors also reported being slapped with this surprise pay cut without any warnings. 

When contacted, Director General BIRDEM, Professor Zafar Ahmed Latif said that the pay cut notice would be communicated to the affected doctors today, a post facto action that will have little consolation for the affected doctors. 

So a life at 100 percent and more now has to be slashed to 50 percent. The doctor does not have an answer as to how to do it.

All that these people can do now is one thing – first, chop off the non-essential spendings. No need for a visit to the exact beauty salon where Liza works. Her clients can do their own eye-brows and pedicures. So Liza will have to sit idle and jobless for an indefinite period and uncertain future.

Then they will have to cut on essentials. Liza is already looking for cheaper accommodation. Maybe right in a slum. She has given up fish and meat. Bhartas (mashed potato) and shutki (dried fish) are economical because if you put in a bit more salt and lots of chilli in them, a pinch of the stuff can see you through your meals.

The overall global outlook does not bode well. The major economies will fall into depressions. Bangladesh's economy cannot remain unscathed in such times and so nobody knows how long it will take to get Liza and Sonia back on track again with their previous jobs. It is an easy guess whether their firms will go bust because those are the ones that will never get any stimulus package from the government.

And if the economy is hobbled, the doctor sees no point in restarting her practice.

Top News / Pursuit

COVID-19 in Bangladesh

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • Excess liquidity Tk2 lakh cr again but banks have little in hand
    Excess liquidity Tk2 lakh cr again but banks have little in hand
  • Photo: Collected
    Extract more local gas, explore solar power: Experts
  • Rising egg prices hit low-income people’s protein intake
    Rising egg prices hit low-income people’s protein intake

MOST VIEWED

  • Representational Image. Photo: Collected
    Air passengers should plan extra commute time to airport: DMP
  • Ambassador of Switzerland to Bangladesh Nathalie Chuard. Photo: Courtesy
    Bangladesh never asked for particular info from Swiss bank: Ambassador
  • Infographic: TBS
    Ctg night safari park: A thrill in the making
  • The number of intra-city buses in the capital decreased significantly since Saturday morning following the government's move to hike fuel prices. The photo shows an empty Farmgate, one of the busiest Dhaka intersections, on Saturday, 6 August, 2022. taken Photo: Rajib Dhar/TBS
    Public transport shortage grips commuters across Bangladesh after fuel price hike
  • Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Sketch: TBS
    PM offers Nepal use Mongla, Chattogram seaports
  • Photo: Bloomberg
    Bangladesh-Iraq trade grows four-fold

Related News

  • New subvariant of Omicron detected in Jashore 
  • Bangladesh best in dealing with Covid in South Asia: Nikkei index
  • Covid deaths in Bangladesh almost 5x more than official stats: WHO 
  • No death from Covid for 14th straight day
  • Covid-19: Zero death, 7 cases reported in 24hrs

Features

Toes and talons of Shikra. Photo; Enam Ul Haque

Shikra: A leopard with wings!

18h | Panorama
Photo: Noor-A-Alam

Around the world in 10 days: A chance to taste global cuisines

17h | Food
Lobbyists float ludicrous arguments to prevent tobacco control act amendment

Lobbyists float ludicrous arguments to prevent tobacco control act amendment

20h | Panorama
Will US-China tensions boil over?

Will US-China tensions boil over?

18h | Panorama

More Videos from TBS

Eggs are selling at record prices

Eggs are selling at record prices

8h | Videos
Dollar price increase affecting Karnaphuli tunnel construction

Dollar price increase affecting Karnaphuli tunnel construction

8h | Videos
Climate crisis a blessing in disguise to them

Climate crisis a blessing in disguise to them

9h | Videos
Growing rice crisis shows how important food self-sufficiency is for Bangladesh

Growing rice crisis shows how important food self-sufficiency is for Bangladesh

11h | Videos

Most Read

1
Dollar crisis: BB orders removal of 6 banks’ treasury chiefs 
Banking

Dollar crisis: BB orders removal of 6 banks’ treasury chiefs 

2
Photo: Collected
Transport

Will Tokyo’s traffic model solve Dhaka’s gridlocks?

3
Representational Image. Photo: Collected
Bangladesh

Air passengers should plan extra commute time to airport: DMP

4
Arrest warrant against Habib Group chairman, 4 others 
Crime

Arrest warrant against Habib Group chairman, 4 others 

5
File Photo: State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid
Energy

All factories to remain closed once a week under rationing system

6
Ambassador of Switzerland to Bangladesh Nathalie Chuard. Photo: Courtesy
Bangladesh

Bangladesh never asked for particular info from Swiss bank: Ambassador

EMAIL US
[email protected]
FOLLOW US
WHATSAPP
+880 1847416158
The Business Standard
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
Copyright © 2022
The Business Standard All rights reserved
Technical Partner: RSI Lab

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - [email protected]

For advertisement- [email protected]