Our weekly Garment Worker Diaries surveys come in two parts: routine questions asked every week to help us establish baselines and spot trends; and special questions posed either by ourselves or asked on behalf of other stakeholders. Special questions are meant to help us better understand some specific aspect of garment workers’ lives. With a few dozen enumerators needing to interview 1,300 garment workers each week, it’s imperative that the length and format of each survey be appropriately crafted. That also means special questions only get to take up so much room in each survey.
This week’s blog uses survey data which come from special questions meant to specifically gauge how pandemic lockdowns in Bangladesh are affecting garment workers in everyday ways. We have been and will keep devoting room in our surveys to these types of questions so that garment workers can directly inform us of the challenges they are facing, without needing to go through or wait for any 3rd parties to do it.
This week we focus on holiday travel for Eid al-Adah. It seems that for those garment workers who commuted to the village and back in observance of Eid, a bit of a premium was paid in money, convenience and personal space.
We’ll keep sharing these updates with you as quickly as the data allow.
As always, please send any questions you have for MFO, SANEM, the workers or about the project to [email protected]
