By Hafizur Rahman, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
In the daylight at the entrance to a shelter, an older Rohingya woman guides a small tool through the mesh of a large white fishing net. Net-making is work she can do at home. Selling a finished net, however, takes weeks of work and money for thread before a buyer pays.
One Rohingya woman interviewed by RB Hafizu, sold three nets in the three months before the interview. She sold one directly to a fisherman and the other two through the local market. A finished net brings her between Tk 2,000 and Tk 3,000, she said. Making one takes at least a month, depending on how much time she can spend on it.
She learned the craft from a neighbour who has since died. The other woman interviewed learned from her father. Now older, she says she can spend less time working on nets than she could when she was younger. That has made it harder for her to finish and sell them regularly.
The buyer pays when the net is ready.
Local fishermen are among the buyers. When a fisherman places an order directly, he and the maker negotiate the price. She buys the thread herself, makes the net at home and receives payment when he comes to collect it. The market offers another way to sell, as two of the first woman’s recent sales show.
For a direct order, the wait between buying thread and getting paid matters. The woman has to cover the cost of the materials at the start, even though she will receive the money only after she has finished the net. She usually sets aside at least Tk 1,000 from a sale to buy thread for the next one. Some of the money from a finished net therefore goes straight back into the work.
The Tk 2,000 to Tk 3,000 is what she receives at the point of sale. How much she earns from an individual net depends on what she spent making it. The amount she sets aside for a new supply of thread does not establish how much the previous net cost her to make.
What the money pays for.
The woman decides how to divide the money between her work and her household and personal expenses. After her most recent sale, she bought herself clothes, paid for repairs to her shelter and put Tk 1,000 towards thread. The sale covered needs she had at home and gave her the materials to start again.
For the older woman, having learned the skill from her father means she can still make nets at home. But she can no longer give the work as much time as she once did, and she sells nets less often. The experience of the woman who sold three in three months gives a picture of what the work brought in over that period. The older woman’s account shows how that pace can change.
For the woman who paid for shelter repairs, the next net began with a decision about the last sale. She kept Tk 1,000 for thread before putting the rest of the money towards clothes and repairs.
About the Author
Hafizur Rahman, also known as RB Hafizu, is a Rohingya journalist, writer, human rights defender and multimedia storyteller based in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. He writes for Rohingya Khobor, Rohingyatograher and RYAN, RPS and reports on Rohingya communities, human rights, women’s issues, education and humanitarian challenges. His work aims to amplify underrepresented voices and document the experiences, struggles and resilience of the Rohingya people.
