By Ila Ananya
The last time garment workers from Tamil Nadu were in the news late last year, it was because of a harrowing letter by six women describing the sexual harassment they faced at work. But now, The News Minute reports that six young women in Tami Nadu were beaten up by a guard and warden of the garment factory they worked at.
The women, who were from Odisha, had wanted to go back home because they didn’t like the tailoring and dyeing work they’d been given. According to The News Minute, a video was shot by the media, where the women can be seen telling the police that they weren’t allowed to leave when they wanted to — when they had walked out of the garment factory-run hostel, the guard and the warden started to beat them up. They were helped by people from the village and taken to a hospital.
But how could that ever be a reason for somebody to take it upon themselves to beat the young women up? The incident has thrown up a lot of questions — why weren’t the women allowed to leave in the first place?
For some reason, the police on the other hand, have a different side to the story despite what’s in the video. They reportedly said that the women [whom they have also tried to reassuringly say are above 18 years] had wanted to go work in another garment factory, and the warden hadn’t allowed them to do this unless their parents came to pick them up. They even went on to say that the women hadn’t told them they’d been beaten up.
The letter by the six garment workers last year showed how women the male supervisors forced themselves on the women, and how any worker who ever resisted their advances would lose a part of their salary. “We need this job and don’t know who to talk to about the abuse we face every day,” they had written. The stories are the same in Bangalore, where in February 2007, Ammu, a garment worker committed suicide after being harassed by her male supervisors. Again, this incident, where young women are beaten up when they try to leave, is a reason to look more closely into how our garment factories work and are regulated.