The Gulf countries have of late opened up its vast labour markets for women workers from Bangladesh. The Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) has already fixed schedules for their online division-wise registration. On the opening day, the response from candidates in Dhaka Division was reportedly not positive. A small number of interested women workers turned up to register their names for jobs in Saudi Arabia. Only after completion of the registration process, one will know the response from women workers.
Opening up of job markets for the Bangladeshi women workers is certainly a silver lining for our foreign currency earnings through manpower export. The government, too, deserves thanks for its initiatives. It is furthermore keen to see safe migration of women workers but what is now very crucial is to devise how their safety and security could be made fool-proof as past experiences are bitter. Over 300 Ansar women, recruited at the government level, had to return home from abroad after two or three months, having been subjected to sexual harassment at their workplaces. Similar was the plight of the Bangladeshi women workers in Hong Kong and Lebanon.
Jatiya Party Chairman HM Ershad was on record as having implored the Prime Minister in parliament not to allow women and girls to be employed abroad. "We don't need money at the cost of our women's chastity," he said.
Hundreds of women and girls in Bangladesh, driven by grinding poverty, fell easy prey to so-called private recruiters, who later proved to be mere human traffickers. That is exactly why awareness needs to be created at the grassroots level about job procedures and requirements to ensure safe migration of female workers.
Earlier experiences show that women, who migrate for housekeeping and cleaning jobs, are often forced to be involved in unsocial work and become the victims of sexual harassment. A recent newspaper report found that the domestic helps have to work up to 18 hours a day. They do not have any day-offs, and their employers do not allow them to go out of their work places. "My employer used to lock me in a room until I would finish the household chores. I had to work from 6:00am to midnight every day," said one Bangladeshi woman worker who returned home after a few months. She went to a Middle Eastern country two years ago with high hopes about bringing solvency to her poor family. She came back empty-handed.
That is why migration of female workers must be choice-oriented and not need-based. There must be coordination of all stakeholders for safe migration of women. Establishment of a resource centre for female migrants involves a long process but it is a must for reaching grassroots level to create awareness for female migrants. It has been found that women are more vulnerable because of their lack of awareness. The state must take initiatives to make them fully aware of the challenges so that they can take correct decisions.
Human rights organisations say, migration of female workers with the job of housemaid should be discouraged. It has been found that when a female worker is employed in a family, it becomes difficult even for the embassy to trace and communicate with her. It will be better for Bangladesh to send skilled and semi-skilled female workers so that they do not have to work as domestic maids.
The government also needs to strengthen its national laws and make full use of international treaties to uphold the rights of the Bangladeshi female migrant workers abroad. The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw) should effectively be applied in order to check all sorts of abuses against female workers that they face in foreign countries. Though migrant workers contribute significantly to the national economy, women migrants in most cases are denied the protection of the labour laws in the receiving countries, making them vulnerable to exploitation and violence.
As less skilled workers, females have fewer job options, get low pay and don't enjoy benefits like housing, health insurance and protection during pregnancy. Cedaw, which protects all women against sexual abuse and gender-based discrimination, is an international human rights treaty that can be effectively used to address the concerns of female migrants at the places of origin, transit and destination.
The government should monitor employment contracts before the workers leave for abroad so that they can get all facilities in the receiving countries. It can activate district employment offices fully to enhance the skills of potential female migrants as they could be employed in offices, not at homes.
Constant monitoring by the Bangladesh embassies of workplace situation of the country's female workers is impractical. Diplomats are there to do works of diplomacy but engaging them in other jobs outside their employment schedules is not only illogical but also can be counter-productive. Or providing cell phones to each and every female worker to report incidents of her harassment either to the police or the embassies will only make things worse for her at her workplace. The government should allow migration of female workers only when it feels that it can fully ensure their safety, security and uphold their honour.
arjayster@gmail.com
Safeguarding women workers abroad
Rahman Jahangir | Published: March 14, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
Share if you like