Harry Potter star Emma wants apparel workers’ wages trebled

Harry Potter star Emma Watson was in Bangladesh last month on an unannounced five-day trip in the second week of July to see the living conditions of the workers who make apparels for the consumers in the west.

She visited the city’s slums where many of the apparel workers live. She also had been to a village in Rajshahi to see the homes of weavers and taught school children there. The 20-year old British actress felt sorry seeing their living condition in the city slums.

She felt that the wages of the workers, who stitch apparels for the consumers in the western developed countries needs to be trebled so that they could afford an acceptable living standard. A video footage on Emma’s visits to the workers’ slums, the waving units in Rajshahi and to a roadside school, has been uploaded in You Tube. New Age spoke to a leader, praised by Emma for demanding better wages for the apparel workers. But Amirul Haque Amin, the secretary of the Bangladesh Garment Workers Federation, did not know that she was the famous Harry Potter star, brought to his office by Bangladeshi fair trade activists.

‘She praised us for our movement for better wages and facilities for the apparel workers,’ Amin told New Age. ‘The workers here, who make apparels for western consumers, needs to be better paid and have better facilities,’ Emma told them.

Emma’s visit was sponsored by UK-based fair trade fashion organisation People Tree. People Tree sources apparels from Bangladeshi fair trade companies who use organic cotton threads, natural dyes and pay maximum wages to the workers. Emma stitched apparels and wove fabrics to have a first hand experience in the manufacturing process at a factory, which exports to People Tree. She dyed natural yarns and fabrics, swam in a river and took a walk along the river barefoot.

Emma is brand promoter for People Tree, which favours payment of maximum wages to workers abroad so that they could afford a decent living.

Chief of a Bangladeshi company which supplies handloom fabrics to People Tree told New Age that Emma was delighted to see weavers and craftspeople living comfortably in a Rajshahi village as they work for fair trade companies. But she was unhappy to see the living conditions in the city slums of the apparel workers, who had had to leave their villages expecting a better life. ‘Even though the cost of living is much less in Bangladesh, less than $6 a week in wage is appalling, especially considering the hours that they work,’ Emma said, in an interview, posted in her website.

The workers seem to work around the clock and still do not have enough money to buy food to feed their families, or live any kind of life at all, she said. ‘I really do hope that they achieve their goal [demand for increased minimum wages] of $18 a week. If they can, it would be life changing for them,’ Emma said.

About the living condition of the apparel workers in the slums, Emma told UK journalists that there are no facilities there [in slums] to speak of. She said, ‘In the building we visited, I saw one shower, one cleaning place and one hole in the floor which was the toilet. This was for the whole floor. That floor had maybe eight or nine rooms coming off it, and each room housed a whole family, that is 32 people to one toilet.’

On her way to Rajshahi, she stopped by a school to teach a math class and, after the lesson, she gave the students presents.