Artistes perform a drama staged at a garment factory to make workers aware of compliance issues at their plant.

On the production floors of the Mohammadi Fashions Limited, a concern of Mohammadi Group, and the Irish Fashion garment factories in Dhaka, traditional dancers twist and shimmy in front of a crowd of workers preparing for their lunch break.
As more and more workers stop to watch, the show changes with the folk dancers giving way to a group of drama students playing out a scene from factory life.
A male worker, trying to work at his machine, has to sprint to the toilet repeatedly clutching his stomach. He has drunk contaminated water from the washroom the day before and is now suffering the consequences.
As the drama unfolds it becomes clear that the factory has provided clean drinking water on each floor, however the workers either do not know, or are too frightened, to use the facilities on offer.
In an industry where working conditions and compliance issues are increasingly in the spotlight the drama students from the Theatre Department of Jahangirnagar University leave little doubt among their enthralled audience of the importance of getting, and using clean water.
It is one of several dramas organised by DaNi Resource Center (DRC), a group working with social audit and compliances issues in the garment sector. The group's aim is to find a more effective way to teach workers rights and responsibilities, as well as good habits such as hygiene.
According to Daly Halder, DRC's chief executive, traditional methods of getting such messages across normally fail. Active in the social auditing field for several years, she noticed that classroom sessions took up too much time and did not hold the workers' attention, while books and leaflets went unread.
DRC's idea is to disseminate the information in a way that will grab the workers' attention, a method known as infotainment.
“Workers always work under pressure and stress. Education or training through drama gives them some relaxation and enjoyment while at the same time communicating key messages,” Daly Halder said.
The show at the Mohammadi Group and Irish Fashion garment factories lasts less than 30 minutes. Other performances cover issues such as recruitment, leave, maternity benefits, health, grievance procedures, wages, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Workers Welfare Committee (WWC), overtime and fire safety.
Factory owners can ask for additional subjects to be addressed that are topical for each factory or particularly relevant, as it is the factory that pays for the show.
When Halder set up her company in 2006 it was a struggle to get factory owners interested, especially at a time when a wave of labour unrest was sweeping the garment industry.
However she persevered and received the backing of the International Finance Corporation's South Asia Enterprise Development Facility (IFC-SEDF). As well as providing some financial support, IFC-SEDF helped open doors to industry leaders, paving the way for the acceptance of DRC's work.
Mrinal Sircar, sector development coordinator of IFC-SEDF, said, “We helped on how to reach the owners easily and effectively. Partly we are trying to create empathy among the owners about the workers through staging the drama.”
And the response has been positive. Badius Salam, executive director of Ananta Garments Limited, an export-oriented woven garment factory with 5000 workers in Ashulia, has used DRC in his factory.
“The drama was a very effective way to convey compliance issues compared with those we had used previously,” said Badius Salam, whose factory supplies international buyers such as GAP and Wal-Mart.
“Previously the issues seemed very complicated but the use of drama made it much easier for the employees to become aware of the issues,” he said.
"We may stage more such dramas in future," he added.
According to Daly Halder, by last week DRC had performed the drama in 60 different factories, communicating key compliance messages to over 18,000 garment workers. DRC charges between Tk25,000 Tk30,000 per show. In the future Daly plans to increase the number of performances and to make a 30-minute film for television.

[email protected]