46pc of boat migrants left home sans informing family: Survey

Around 46 per cent of the Bangladeshis who set out for Malaysia by boat on a risk ride through high seas left home without informing their family, says a survey report amid the current people-smuggling crisis.  
And 10.76 per cent of the desperate overseas job-seekers went missing, says the report on the survey conducted by Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Programme (OKUP).
This means the migrants have yet to contact their families after they boarded the ferries of fortune around six months back, it added.
One respondent family confirmed the death of a member during the journey, while 3.16 per cent landed in jails in Malaysia.
The study, titled 'Sailing to Malaysia: Desperation of Fortune Seekers', was carried out among 158 victims' families in Araihazar of Narayanganj and Narsingdi Sadar in 2014.
Shakirul Islam, chairman of OKUP, said during September- December 2013 period, his organisation received some 400 complaints about the clandestine journey to Malaysia in its project areas in the two districts.
In this situation, they planned to launch a study on missing overseas workers. The survey followed a semi-structured questionnaire. In addition, it took interviews of six returnees from Malaysia.
OKUP, a grassroots migrants' organisation, also revealed that of the Bangladeshis who reached the newly industrialised Southeast Asian country, 59.53 per cent had been going through hard realities since they did not manage either any job or document.
They are surviving only because relatives and fellow migrants in Malaysia are supporting them.
Nearly 21.52 per cent have got full-time job and are working without major problem under the shelter of their close relations. Some 4.43 per cent have part-time job through which they are trying to survive. But none of them got any legal document.
It also said some 87 per cent were engaged in different types of occupations before sailing to Malaysia, like textile-mill jobs, mechanic works, rickshaw-pulling, small selling and agricultural activities.
Of the total, 76 per cent are between 18 and 30 years old, 20 per cent 31 to 40 and four per cent are bellow 18 or over 40 years, it showed.
Besides, 53 per cent of them have never enrolled into formal schools while the rest 44 per cent have only primary education between one and five classes. At least 70 per cent of them are married, having children.   
While interviewing OKUP found out the most important things working behind such perilous journey are strong presence of various cycles of local agents and traditional rackets of human trafficking.
Second important factor is the offer of on- arrival payments. This means that the migrants do not need to pay any fee before departure-the payments are being made only after reaching Malaysia.
Local people considered the slow and apparently futile government-to- government (G to G) migration process as another important factor pushing people into such irregular migration.
Many families had been forced to sell the small patches of their homesteads to pay the brokers to get their beloved ones released.
The study also found out three layers of human smugglers working in the total process of trafficking people to Malaysia.
The study recommended necessary allocation in the national budget and undertaking massive awareness campaigns to check such offences.
Besides, Shakirul Islam says, to stop human smuggling the government have to acknowledge the problem and take necessary steps from the sides of the ministries concerned.
"Government also should strengthen monitoring system in the border areas," he pointed out.
As per the information of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, around 1,342 Bangladeshis were arrested over the last few days in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand on way of unauthorized migration.
About 4,000 voyagers were still adrift at sea, the organisations said.
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