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Many of these workers were brutally tortured by police before deportation. They were allegedly rounded up on a random basis from their workplaces and compelled to leave the oil-rich countries without even collecting their belongings and savings or due salaries.
Most of the migrant workers returned home bruised and injured, and deeply frustrated over losing the employment for which they had invested their family assets. There are allegations that some workers were sent back immediately after arriving in those countries. They have been plunged into deep despair about their economic futures.
It is shameful that Bangladesh’s diplomatic missions abroad failed to protect the rights of their own people. Serious criticism has been leveled against the government and its missions in the two Middle East countries over this failure.
The unemployed poor are easily trapped by the brokers of private manpower exporting agents across the country. The brokers tempt people with fairy tales about the work and the benefits they will get. They imply that by paying a fee and registering with their company, a worker can get rich in a few months.
In a country where more than 20 million educated people are unemployed, the uneducated worry about survival. The assurances of the brokers offer a ray of hope that a poor worker can find a brighter future. But first, they must pay a fee.
The agonizing hardships of their lives influence frustrated people to gamble with their fates and the last assets their families possess. They start collecting money according to the requirements of the brokers.
If a family has a piece of land, it is promptly sold, often to a moneyed person waiting for the opportunity to get the land cheaply. An unmarried man thinks about getting married to a woman who can pay a dowry equivalent to what he needs to get employment abroad.
Some people insist that their in-laws should pay the required fee, and use physical and psychological assaults on their wives to force them to pay. Some married people attempt to marry again to "earn" a dowry from the second wife's relatives. Some sell their wives’ ornaments, whether or not the women agree. Some go to the microcredit companies to borrow the whole amount or a certain portion of it at a huge spiraling interest rate.
The manpower exporting agencies make passports for the workers by paying bribes to the police and the relevant bureaucrats; then they keep the passports in their possession, although this is unlawful. The broker informs the client that his passport is ready and sometimes shows the passport to ensure his credibility, as getting a passport has been made a difficult job due to corruption and harassment by law-enforcers.
The client pays more money to the agent following repeated insistence. At some point the client becomes desperate at the long process, fearing deception, and may try to get his money refunded.
In the end, some people manage to get employment and some do not. It helps if migrant relatives abroad play an active role in helping to find jobs. The poor work hard to earn bread and butter for their families as well as for the nation, in most cases on their own.
The government of Bangladesh knows that there are thousands of so-called agents of manpower exporting companies. The media regularly covers such stories. Some of these companies belong to members of Parliament from big political parties. They send 500 people abroad and cheat a few thousand more innocent illiterate job-seekers; and they build high-rise towers in the cities and drive luxurious vehicles of various brands.
The government of Bangladesh, in declaring its national budget every year, boasts of earning huge amounts in remittances from expatriate Bangladeshis, as if this were its own achievement. In July the country reported that more than US$8 billion was remitted to Bangladesh from migrant workers in the last fiscal year.
While migrant workers have been contributing so much to the nation, the Bureau of Manpower, under the Ministry of Labor and Manpower, and the Ministry of Expatriate Welfare – which are supposed to have well-designed plans to promote employment abroad – have been completely irresponsible, initiating no realistic programs to prevent the abuse of workers. Neither the law-enforcement agencies, Ministry of Home Affairs or the Finance Ministry have done anything meaningful to address the situation.
The diplomats abroad refer to migrant workers as "sons of beggars" and treat them inhumanly, whereas they are supposed to ensure the protection of their own nationals through bilateral negotiations at the state level. After all, their own salaries and benefits are paid by those hardworking poor people.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has no adequate policy to protect the rights of migrant workers around the world. There is no credible coordination among the departments responsible for assisting job-hunters at home and migrant workers abroad. No action is taken against the corrupt public officials and cheating manpower exporters.
The government policymakers must rethink their perverted policy of slumbering and remaining silent when the best contributors to the nation's economy are in need. The authorities must have a pro-people policy to correct the system and protect the rights of their compatriot workers around the world.
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(Rater Zonaki is the pseudonym of a human rights defender based in Hong Kong working at the Asian Human Rights Commission. He is a Bangladeshi national with a degree in literature from a university in Dhaka. He began his career as a journalist in 1990 and engaged in human rights activism at the grassroots level in his country for more than a decade. He also worked as an editor for publications on human rights and socio-cultural issues and contributed to other similar publications.)
