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Occupational Health 2018 Journal of Nursing and Health Studies
ISSN: 2574-2825 Page 24
May 28-29, 2018
London, UK
4th Edition of International Conference on
Occupational Health and
Safety
Bangladesh garment sector is pre-dominated by women
comprising 85% of 4 million workforces. Mental distress
affects their work life, productivity leading to a poor work-
life. The normal day of women worker starts at 4 am, cooks
food in the common kitchen available for 4-5 families, goes
to work at 7 am, and has a longer work day till 7 pm, then is
back to take care of her family and goes to bed between 10-
11 pm. She has no time of her own, a victim of violence and
abuse both in the factory and work, no one to share her pain.
Factory management don’t realize the fact when psychosocial
challenges and issues go unaddressed, it impacts workers’
effectiveness in the work place. The pilot intervention by SNV
with 600 workers evidenced how introducing psychosocial
counsellor at workplace impacted the situation in factories.
Welfare officers, who are the first contact point for workers in
factory, were trained by certified psychologists and counsellors,
and these trained para-counsellors were institutionalized
inside factory. In words of the counsellor within two month of
introduction and program awareness, three women came with
anxiety and one of them had four sessions with the counsellor
for mental relief, three women reported work stress and took
three separate counselling sessions, others include conflict
with supervisor, family conflict, financial crisis, relationship
issue and the resulted anxiety. On success of this intervention,
SNV is now moving towards workers wellbeing management
course for developing counsellors for the ready-made garment
sector to address worker psychological issues.
Biography
Farhtheeba Rahat Khan is a development professional with experience
backed-up by private sector interventions and development sector working
realities and challenges. As the lead of private sector health project, she un-
dertook studies and worked on the policy front with Ministry of Health its
directorates for formulation of policy framework, guidelines and accredita-
tion systems in the health training, and emphasized on avenues for wom-
en employment in the health sector. Currently, she is the Team Leader for
‘Working with Women’ project implemented by SNV where she is facilitating
interventions in garment factories, to ensure health and well-being in a sus-
tainable manner. Her research interests include: child psychology and how
to induce effective childhood learning retaining the same framework; work
life patterns affecting women’s attitude and its impact on family and society
and; measuring changes and its attribution to a single factor: the complexity
around it and its authentication challenges.
Addressing mental health problems of readymade garment
workers
Farhtheeba Rahat Khan, Mahmudur Rahman Chowdhury and Khaled Ahmed
SNV Netherlands Development Organization, Bangladesh
Farhtheeba Rahat Khan et al., J Nurs Health Stud 2018, Volume 3
DOI: 10.21767/2574-2825-C2-005