In recent years, a number of stories have been reported in the media about the awful sufferings and exploitation of Bangladeshi women migrant workers in some Middle East countries. Many of the victims returned home empty-handed, tortured or even dead, which posed questions about the protection of women migrant workers in those countries. From 1991 to September this year, a total of 1,170,000 women workers reportedly went abroad from Bangladesh. Of them, as many as 73 per cent were forced to go abroad because they had no means of livelihood in this country. Among them, the numbers of domestic workers, caregivers, nurses, readymade garment workers were high. Some 17.1 per cent of the women fled from their work due to allegations of sexual harassment. More than 37 per cent of women workers who returned home left behind salary arrears. Forty-four per cent of the expatriate women workers went to Saudi Arabia, where allegations of physical abuse and sexual harassment were the highest.
According to a study, a total of 69 per cent of the workers died due to natural (including various diseases) causes and 31 per cent of the female workers' death was unnatural (accident, suicide). But unfortunately, no post mortem was done in any case of those unnatural deaths. Again, our embassy or expatriate welfare ministry does not take a proactive role in this matter. As a result, incidents of murders are shown as accidents. It is the responsibility of the embassies to look after the security and facilities of our expatriate workers. But they do not seem to follow it properly. There are also allegations that expatriate workers are subjected to harassment when they go to the Bangladesh Embassy for help. There must be a fair and credible investigation into every incident of migrant women workers' death.
Ashikujaman Syed,
Research Assistant,
Bioinformatics Research Lab,
Center for Research Innovation and Development (CRID).
syedashikujaman@yahoo.com