My new man meets my dear friend

Cheap labor is both a blessing and a curse in Bangladesh. Low production costs are the key to exports and employment but also a brake for further development.
In a country with over 160 million inhabitants there is always an abundance of workers available. People work long hours for almost no money, often in appalling conditions.  This does not apply only to the garment industry but all sectors that use manual laborers.

And most sectors do since using large numbers of people is much cheaper than machines. At a construction site a group of fifty men can work a whole day lifting and moving materials that a machine would do in an hour.
Today I passed a lawn where a man was squatting and cutting the grass with a sickle. No need to say that the result was not as perfect as with a lawnmower but had rather a handmade touch.

The overuse of underpaid workers is very visible in all kinds of security jobs, too.
In the front of our smallish apartment building there is a gate with two doors. Two men in paramilitary uniforms open and close the gate with a little military salute, day and night.
When they don’t have "customers", they sit on small stools outside a little booth where the team’s third member is located.
The work is probably not very demanding, certainly not rewarding and definitely badly paid: 9000 takas (103 euros) a month for a 60 hours week.

 

Even on the domestic scene we have a machine issue.
The new man in my life, our housekeeper S., is very industrious and conscientious but his working methods are not exactly modern.
We got our moving stuff and I proudly introduced S. to my loyal, good friend, the vacuum cleaner. The idea is not to take way his job but to make it easier and more effective.
S. smiled politely but there was no direct love in the air. He seems to prefer an old mop and a bucket of water.