[UnnayanNews] BANGLADESHI BREAD-WINNERS SHUNNED BY GOVT

Wed Dec 29 07:47:30 CST 2010

BANGLADESHI BREAD-WINNERS SHUNNED BY GOVT

An NNN-AMIC Special Report by Siraj Shahjahan

DHAKA, Dec 22 (NNN-AMIC) -- There are more than seven million people from
Bangladesh who are working abroad, a significant portion of them unskilled
people, mainly men, who face many problems while overseas.

The Bangladesh government it seems does not have any safety nets to help
them out when they are in trouble overseas, especially with non-payment of
wages and debt burdens resulting from hefty placement fees charged by
recruitment agents.

"What is the reason for this problem ? That is the main reason indeed we
have to identify," says Hazrat Ali, the Assistant Secretary of the Labour
Ministry. "The people who are not skilled, they are facing problems."

"If these people remain in Bangladesh they would have been unemployed and
the government would have to take the responsibility for them for their
feeding, livelihood and all the other things. But as they are migrating to
other countries they are taking on their own responsibility and with this
migration, neither the government or the civil society are supporting them,"
notes Shifa Hafiz, the Director of Gender Justice, Diversity and Advocacy,
at the non-governmental organization (NGO) BRAC.

"It is mostly through the recruiting agencies they are migrating. (These)
recruiting agencies are exploiting them."

Remittances have emerged as the key driver of economic growth in Bangladesh,
increasing at an average rate of 10 per cent annually for the past 30 years.
Revenues from remittances now exceed foreign exchange inflows of both
official development assistance (ODA) and net earnings of exports.

The bulk of these remittances are sent by migrant workers, working
especially in the Middle East, under harsh conditions.

There have been widespread allegations of ruthless exploitation of these
migrant workers by recruitment agents both in Bangladesh and overseas, yet,
though they are the major foreign exchange earners for the country, the
Bangladesh government has not been in the forefront in helping them out.

Tahmina's story is testimony to this fact. She is a poor rural woman from
the Dinajpur district whose husband died 17 years ago and she was left with
three sons and a daughter to support. Unable to feed them, she decided to go
overseas to work.

"It was very hard to live and we could not have proper meal, so we came to
Dhaka. I was doing household work there and my elder son worked in a stall.
After some time I joined a garments factory. I had a neighbour, Ruston Ali,
who said I should go abroad for a better life. He told that his wife work in
Dubai and he would help me to go there. I had to pay 80,000 Taka (about
1,135 USD)," she explained.

"I said it is a very big amount for me. But he said try hard if you can
manage the money to go there, after few days you can take your son there.
Then he got me a passport and medical tests were done. He said, that if I
try to manage the rest of the money my visa will come soon. Then after one
month he said my visa has come and demanded the rest of the money. I had to
take a forty thousand Taka loan from a person at 10 per cent interest and
give him the money. Then after 15 days he came to me and said today is your
flight. When I had reached the airport he told me that I am going to
Lebanon. I said I will not go to Lebanon, but he convinced me and said that
I will get good salary, near twelve thousand taka (USD 170) a month."

Her first week in Lebanon went smoothly, but after that troubles started.
"They were very cruel to me," Thamina recalled. "They didn't give me proper
meals. They tortured me physically and mentally. For six months I didn't eat
rice. I was very ill in that time then one day my son called me. I told him
everything, and said that please save me from here. He went to Rustom Ali.
He demanded 70,000 taka more to bring me home. My son didn't have the money
but he was trying. Then suddenly he found BRAC and BRAC rescued me from
Lebanon."

Such exploitation happens because some people are made to believe by
recruitment agents that in the Middle East, the streets are virtually paved
in gold. So they sell all their assets to go overseas to reach that pot of
gold only to find later that they have been misled.

This is another of such stories as told by a former migrant labourer who
went to Saudi Arabia, who did not want to be named.

"I went to Saudi Arabia with the help of a relative after paying 400,000
taka. I worked there as a caretaker of sheep but my boss didn't give me any
money," he said, adding, "They didn't even give me proper food. My boss came
some time in a while and he brought chicken for us. But when I demanded my
salary he became very angry and beat me. Eleven months I didn't get any
salary."

Since he was not paid he left the job and went first to work in Mecca, where
a Bangladeshi gave him a job and paid him 49,000 taka after two months. "I
requested one of my co-worker to help me to send the money to my family. He
took all the money and called the police. Then the police arrested me and
put me in jail. The police destroyed all of my documents and took the little
amount of money I had," he explained. "I wasn't able to get any help from
anyone. I was one month in the Jail and then senr back to my country."

Before he went to Saudi Arabia he had a farm in Bangladesh with almost 900
ducks. "I had sold the farm and also sold some of the land to go to Saudi
Arabia. Now I work as a day labourer and my wife works in a garments
factory," he said.

The Bangladesh government is well aware that their workers are being
exploited like this but argues that they cannot stop people from going
abroad. As Hazrat Ali explains, "We cannot stop it because the people of our
country always think that if they can go abroad they will get something like
a golden dear.

"But, shouldn't the government take responsibility to educate the people?
Even change their mindsets? They have been cheated through the recruiting
agencies, middle man (because) they don't have any proper information,"
argues Saiful Haque, the Chief of WARB Foundation.

"There should be a regulatory framework where the recruiting agencies and
the middleman can go through some of the regulatory process where they
cannot cheat the migrant workers. There is not much law in our country (to
protect) migrant workers, but the recruiting agencies have their business
protection.

"The government has set up vocational training centres to send out more
skilled workers overseas with the hope that they will earn more and remit
home more. But, they have not moved, even though legislation exists, to
crack down on unscrupulous recruitment agents who exploit the migrant
workers."

Shifa Hafiz of BRAC argues that labour migration in Bangladesh should be
seen as a human rights issue. "Most often when the labor migrants enter the
aircraft they are becoming undocumented. The documents are mostly kept by
the recruiting agency, particularly in case of female migrants, they are
taking the female migrants outside of the countries and once they are
outside these female migrants have no address, no connection with the
outside world even with their own family. So whenever they are either sick,
ill, pregnant or even if they are dead they have no identification. So
migration is very much a violation of human rights in this country," she
observes.

"Nobody is taking the responsibility for the poor migrants who are earning
currency for the country and totally sacrificing their life for the
livelihood for their families."
-- NNN-AMIC

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*Shahjahan **Siraj*
Director, Machizo Multimedia Communication

House- 35, Flat-D5, Road-12 A ( new ), Dhanmondi R/A, Dhaka - 1209,
Bangladesh
E: siraj at machizo.com , M: + 88-01715212204 P:+88-02-9119846
Skype: sirajtps | Social Network: sirajdhaka |  http://www.machizo.com

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