In the 10am demonstration in front of Mahabandula Park, the group made two demands to the government. One of them was to ratify convention No. 98 of the International Labour Organisation, to recognise the rights of workers to organise protests and demand for collective bargaining.

MICS secretary-general U Aung Thu said Myanmar had already signed the ILO convention No.87 on the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise, which was related to number 98.

Despite this, he said some workers were arrested after standing up for their rights.

“Sometimes workers have to speak out because of their situations. Then, they end up arrested under Article 18 or Article 505 B because the government has not signed convention number 98 yet,” he said.

He was referring to Article 18 of the Peaceful Assembly Law and Article 505(b) of the Penal Code, which could be used to penalise people who take part in protests.

The second demand made during the demonstration was to have one organisation that represented all workers, which could send a representative, who spoke for all Myanmar workers, to the annual International Labour Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, U Aung The said.

“Previously, the representative was chosen based on the situation at the time. There used to be just a few labour groups.

“But we have many labour groups now. The representative should be someone who represents all labour groups,” he said.

MICS central executive committee member U Thet Hnin Aung said although the National League for Democracy-led government was handling many important matters, such as national reconciliation and peace, worker affairs was a matter of importance too.

“There are many issues for the government to deal with. But the government needs to care about the daily issues and concerns affecting citizens like workers and farmers, as well as their wellbeing.

“If not, we are going to face many difficulties,” he said.

The protest went on for an hour with workers shouting and chanting slogans, and voicing out their two demands. MICS said the organisation would look into taking further action if their demands were ignored.