It is customary that a hike in inward remittance from migrant workers prompts the government to consider it not just a sobering phenomenon, but more importantly, a strong defence of its policies and actions regarding the eight million-plus workforce abroad. Workers' remittance, according to the Bangladesh Bank (BB) data, surged by 7.21 per cent to US$ 11.25 billion in the first nine months of the current fiscal year (FY), 2014-15, from US$ 10.49 billion in the corresponding period of the last fiscal.
This substantial rise, despite endless job-related uncertainties facing the workers in their workplaces abroad, is largely attributed to the initiative of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) regarding allowing local banks to sign drawing arrangements with the foreign exchange houses, particularly those in the Middle Eastern countries, to send the remittances through electronic network. The BB data show that inward remittances increased to US$ 1.33 billion in March this year from US$ 1.28 billion in the same month of 2014. During the period, private commercial banks received US$ 864.06 million, while state-run ones received US$ 435.29 million, foreign commercial banks US$ 15.88 million, and specialised banks US$ 17.17 million.
Recognising that the money received from the expat workers is a source of great strength for the government points to a different reality that is far from pleasant. No wonder, it is only the money we see that they send, not their sunken faces, not the drudgery they go through and the pitiless conditions in which they live in foreign soils. It is, in other words, a collective selfish instinct that counts on only the goodies they deliver and not the circumstances under which they do so. Although it is common knowledge that a total mismanagement, coupled with the criminality often associated with the manpower agencies at home and their overseas collaborators, is largely responsible for their plight, nothing in the form of a smooth and tangible mechanism to address their problems is yet in sight.
Amidst this sordid state, tiny blips of hope are noticed when human right activists raise the problems besetting the entire cycle of activities -- recruitment of the workers, their employment conditions, salary packages, nature and status of work permits and so on. Needless to say, there is an awful lack of transparency in the system which also involves the role that the government has been playing over the decades.
Rough estimates say little over eight million migrant Bangladeshi workers, including 100,000 females, are currently employed in different countries, concentrated mostly in the Middle Eastern and South Asian regions. The present government since its taking over has made some efforts to improve the conditions of manpower business. These, however, in most cases are reactive rather than proactive to address the ever-mounting problems. Some of the critical problems that have been continually causing threats to the desired growth of this sector are high migration cost, fraudulent practices of recruiting agencies, lack of adequate supervision and extensive monitoring of the activities of these agencies by the government, human and institutional resource constraints in the overseas Bangladesh embassies etc. To point out just one, in most of the countries where the workers are based, the Bangladesh embassies are poorly staffed, except those in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. In the Gulf states, the embassies can barely spare one official to attend to labour matters. And sadly, the incumbent official, besides his obvious limitations of being a civil servant with no exposure to labour matters, finds things unmanageably scaring with virtually no support logistics. It is extremely impossible for a single person to even remain focused on affairs involving hundreds of thousands of workers, that too in a foreign land. Even in normal times, the services required by the workers are not at all adequately met due mainly to the dearth of human and other resources -- not to mention the unforeseen situations at times of crisis. We have witnessed such situations in Iraq, Malaysia and lately, in Libya where the workers were left to their fates for deliverance.
What has lately emerged is more threatening, and if the government falters to handle it well in time, it may warrant a serious disaster for the expatriate workers. It's about issuing machine readable passports (MRPs) to well over three million expats within the deadline of November 24, set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). The fallout, in the event of failure, can well be guessed. The work, reportedly, is progressing at a far slow pace than what is required. One only hopes the government rises to the task.
So, it's not the feel-good factor from remittances that only counts. The fact that should make all concerned uptight is that this sector that has grown over the decades despite the attendant ordeals, accounts for around 54 per cent of the country's total forex earnings and more than 10 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP). It is only when the well-being of the workers will be integral to government policy and visible too at various stages of its implementation that the nation can count on high inward remittances with a sense of moral ease, if not necessarily with contentment.
wasiahmed.bd@hotmail.com
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