DHAKA, Bangladesh<\/p>\n
Police used batons to disperse scores of garment workers protesting for better wages in Bangladesh’s capital Saturday, leaving at least a dozen injured, police and witnesses said.<\/p>\n
The violence occurred in Dhaka’s Uttara residential district after dozens of workers smashed shops, barricaded a major road and hurled stones at police, local police chief Shafiqul Alam told reporters.<\/p>\n
The wage dispute has triggered a series of violent incidents in recent months. A government committee is trying to settle the issue.<\/p>\n
The workers are demanding a minimum monthly wage of 3,000 takas (US$44;), up from the current 930 takas (US$13).<\/p>\n
Bangladesh has more than 3,000 garment factories employing about 1.8 million workers, mostly women.<\/p>\n
The impoverished country earns more than US$7 billion each year from textile exports, mainly to the United States and Europe, according to Bangladesh’s Export Promotion Bureau.<\/p>\n
Saturday’s protest disrupted traffic for hours on the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway, Alam said.<\/p>\n
The protesters took positions in alleys along the highway after they had been dispersed, local reporter Zahedul Islam told The Associated Press by phone from the scene.<\/p>\n
Police cordoned off the area, he said.<\/p>\n
He said hundreds of vehicles were stranded on the highway, with police diverting them to alternate routes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DHAKA, Bangladesh Police used batons to disperse scores of garment workers protesting for better wages in Bangladesh’s capital Saturday, leaving at least a dozen injured, police and witnesses said. The violence occurred in Dhaka’s Uttara residential district after dozens of workers smashed shops, barricaded a major road and hurled stones at police, local police chief […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","spay_email":""},"categories":[50,11],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}