I’m writing from the mountains of northern Laos. I just dropped my bag in my room after a fabulous day working with People Tree designers and silk and dye experts with ethnic Lanten people. We were last here staying at the Boat Landing Guest House at Christmas and there was the odd fairy light strung around a shrub or two – but to amazement through my window I notice that the surrounding gardens are alive with twinkling fireflies. It’s rainy season here and the bugs are BIG.
Laos opened itself to the world only twenty years ago. The north is inhabited by hill tribes and ethnic minority people who are fighting to keep their cultures alive despite the onslaught of globalization. Some have been forced to move down from their remote villages by overseas governments worried about illegal opium production, others have moved to be near a road to town to get access to education and medical support.
People Tree is working to set up a Fair Trade handicraft project here in the north that will benefit the ethnic minority people and help them to develop their communities and get adequate income to send their children to school. Having been forced out of the forest on which they depended for their food and livelihood, traditional handicrafts production will make a big difference to their well-being and sustaining their cultures.

The Lanten people grow cotton organically between their rice and vegetable crops and handspin and handweave it on narrow handlooms, finally it is plunged into a vat of indigo plant dye and repeatedly dyed six times to produce a rich blue colour.

The textile making process is so pure and authentic – everyone is excited by it. But it is not enough to take pleasure in this area as a living museum – people need access to proper facilities and ways to meet their basic needs.

(If you are planning to travel overseas then do do eco-travel and support the local community like the Boat Landing does.)

Location: Dhaka, Bangladesh

Location – Dhaka, Bangladesh
We are in the slums of Dhaka, where garment workers and their children make up 90% of the population.
Roshina welcomes us into her home, a room 6 by 6 foot. She is heavily pregnant and is on 12 weeks maternity leave from the factory, UNPAID. Her 6 year old son, Rashid (who incidentally shares my brother’s name) sits on her knee smiling. She talks of the hardship of living in these slums on stilts – the area floods during the rains. They share a four burner stove, two toilets and a single cubicle in which to wash your body with one hundred other people. Her room costs her just under half of her salary.
She used to have a salary of 2200 taka per month but is now living of her husbands’ truck driving income. Her sister will come and live in the slum and take care of the baby, so she can go back to work, 9 weeks after giving birth.
If only the people who bought the clothes we make, knew of our struggle. Please tell them to buy more so I have more work and pay.
I’ve come with the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF). Garment workers are made to feel that companies cannot afford to pay a decent wage that allows them to live with some dignity, but we know this is not the case when you look at the huge profits made on the high street by fashion companies.
I start to tell Roshina about our work in Fair Trade to provide work in the rural areas for weavers, tailors, etc.
I would love to return to my village to live in a clean environment with my family, if there was work there.
The NGWF is campaigning for a minimum wage of 3000 taka – nearly twice the average wage, a one day holiday a week and an end to sexual harassment of workers. Nonetheless, the garment industry is a life line to Bangladeshi workers and to Bangladesh’s economy. No one wants tp kill the goose that lays the golden egg – but workers are very far indeed from making their fair share of the eggs. They explain how people struggle to survive, The average wage is 1700 taka per month (approx US$ 20 per month). Living costs are extremely high. And garment workers work between 12 and 14 hours each day and few get two days off every month.

Leaving the slums with a heavy heart at the inhumanity of it all, I visit a garment factory called Millennium Garments Ltd. A very charming factory manager introduces me to the Social Compliance Officer. We pour over their recent social audit, results are not good. It’s a work in progress, he says cheerfully.
He proudly shows me a new floor where a row of three shining white tiled toilets stand ready. Typically, only one of these three toilets has water, (water is used instead of toilet paper in Bangladesh – so it’s really critical!) And they are shared by three hundred people.
Pressure from consumers on fashion companies is finally getting through to subcontractors and the garment factories, but we have a long was to go yet. When I ask the factory manager if he thinks that Bangladesh’s’ minimum wage of 930 taka per month (which hasn’t changed since 1994) is enough to live on, he says: Yes, people share a room and that way people can live without any problems.
I tell him that I have just come from the slums, he starts to look a little unsure of what he has just said…