Twenty-two Bangladeshi women domestic helps returned home from Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) on Tuesday evening after falling victim to different kinds of workplace exploitation, sources said.
With the fresh influx, about 200 female migrant workers have come back home from the country this month.
Besides, 217 more women are also waiting to be repatriated at safe home and emigration camps in this gulf country.
Most of the workers migrated into the country from Bangladesh through official channel six months to two years back.
Since January, over 1,200 women have returned home because of different kinds of assault, sector insiders said.
Denial of fair wages and physical and sexual assaults were mentionable among the sufferings the women faced, they added.
Nesarun, among the 22 returnees, told the FE that she was denied wage by her employer.
"My employer's family members beat me severely when I demanded wage," she said. Still four months' salaries are unpaid, she added.
"I went to the Arab country eight months back because of hardship in my family," she said.
The woman, who hails from Kulaura upazila of Sylhet division, said she is now empty-handed.
Like Nesarun, most of the women faced similar problems, said a representative of BRAC migration programme.
He was at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on the day to receive the returnees.
Majority of the women were engaged in hazardous jobs. They were also tortured in many ways, following which they took shelter in safe home, he said.
Shakirul Islam, chairman of Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program - OKUP, said the government should adopt a proper policy to ensure protection of domestic helps in Saudi Arabia.
"We can't throw our women workers into a risky situation. So the government should be serious about their protection," he observed.
A total of 39,578 Bangladeshi women went to the oil-rich country with jobs in the first five months of 2018, Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) statistics said.
Since 1991, more than 0.7 million female workers have gone abroad. Of them, about 0.2 million migrated to Saudi Arabia with domestic help jobs.
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