Once again, there is a sad story of the plight of our people in the Middle East, biggest hub of our expatriate workers. According to some reports, hundreds of women workers who went to Saudi Arabia as house-maid, have returned home dismayed, disgruntled and disillusioned. They preferred to return home scrapping their employment contracts upon alleged maltreatment and even physical torture by their employing masters and family members. This is truly unfortunate.
It may be recalled that about 0.2 million (2.0 lakh) women were recruited by different manpower export agencies to be employed as house-maid with thousands of families in different Middle East countries, prominently Saudi Kingdom, Kuwait and the UAE. Each of those job seekers paid a hefty amount of money to get the employment and related documents including the airfare. However, soon after going there many of them opted to return home. These women, almost all from the rural areas, had dreamt of escaping the scourge of poverty or raising the standard of living. Moreover, with women gaining more empowerment in the society through massive employment, automatically look for opportunities beyond their own villages, cities and even the country. That is why thousands of our rural women are vying to work abroad as domestic aide.
Unfortunately, their dreams get shattered when they face maltreatment or serious abuse from their employers. In most cases, they cannot escape the continued misbehaviour and torture because the employers keep their passports. There are allegations that the Bangladesh Embassy in those countries shrugs off any responsibility to save these suffering women. This complaint has been in place for long time in the cases of hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi male workers engaged in employment in different sectors in the Middle East.
It is to be stated that the Bangladesh government had signed an agreement with the concerned authority in Saudi Arabia in 2011 regarding recruitment of female house-maid from the country. However, reports of maltreatment of such house-maid from the Philippines, India and Sri Lanka by their employers in Saudi Arabia frustrated the efforts of the agencies here. Later when the Saudi authorities reportedly enforced a new formula of recruiting three male workers against one female house-maid, the gateway was opened for Bangladeshi women job seekers.
It is not understandable why the Bangladesh embassies in those countries should not help in mitigating the sufferings of the country's expatriate workers. The expatriate workers send home the biggest chunk of its foreign exchange receipts and their rights and honour must be safeguarded. If lethargy, negligence and inappropriate action by the country's diplomatic missions add to the suffering of the expatriate workers, they should be brought to book. It may be recalled that recently there was a serious diplomatic row between Kuwait and the Philippines over the reports of maltreatment of Filipino workers in Kuwait. The crisis was solved after assurances of good treatment were given by the Kuwaiti government.
As it is said, the Bangladesh authorities have to be vocal to protect the country's expatriate workers. Two years ago, an international conference on migration and protection of the migrants was held in Dhaka. Unfortunately, within these two years, reports are surfacing about the failures in protecting migrant workers of Bangladesh. There is a need for revising the country's commitments in this regard.
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