Death in Thai jungles

A good number of Bangladeshis have so far embraced death while trying to sneak illegally into countries that are relatively affluent. Most of them died in very difficult conditions either in high seas or dense forests or mountains or deserts since human traffickers prefer these routes to evade detection. Bangladeshis are not the only people putting their life at stake to seek a better living condition or employment in alien countries. Nearly 2000 people from war-torn Syria, Libya and some other poor African countries drowned in the Mediterranean in the first four months of the current calendar year while trying to enter Italy, Greece and a few other European countries by cargo vessels or boats illegally. More than 100 Bangladesh nationals also had died in a number of incidents of boat-capsize in recent months in the Andaman Sea en route to Malaysia.
But the discovery of at least 32 mass graves in the dense forests of southern part of Thailand a few days back has unfolded a horrifying tale. It is suspected that most of the eight skeletons recovered from two such graves by the Thai authorities belong to Bangladeshis. Thai authorities say there could be many more similar graves in areas bordering Malaysia. Media reports are galore that human transnational traffickers with a view to cashing on the craze among a section of Bangladeshis, who are mostly illiterate and unskilled, to go to Malaysia, legally or illegally, have developed a well-knit exploitative and inhuman operation. The traffickers resort to looting, ransom seeking, physical torture etc., to squeeze out money from poor job seekers.
The victims who fail to fulfil their demands are tortured to death, particularly by the Thai traffickers, who are reportedly the cruelest of all involved in the network. In October last year Thai authorities rescued 134 victims of such trafficking from a rubber plantation located in south Thailand. Of them, 118 were Bangladeshis and the rest Rohingyas. The Thai authorities should have been much more alert to prevent the human traffickers from using their soil to carry out such operations. It is expected that they would conduct special raids to bust the traffickers' camps, if there is any, and take to task their own officials who are also part of the network of human trafficking.  
Based on past happenings, it is widely feared that bodies buried in the mass graves could be those of Bangladesh nationals. But this dreadful discovery made in the Thai jungle is unlikely to stop the illegal outbound journeys by the fortune seekers and, in the process, fall victim to unsavoury situation. One can put all the blame on the shoulders of the people concerned for being too ignorant or greedy and falling into the well-laid out traps of the human traffickers or unscrupulous manpower agents. But there are other ways of looking at the issue and holding some other people, who have been in-charge of the statecraft over the years, partly responsible. There has been no dearth of tall claims about the country making progress, in economic terms. Official statistics do also substantiate such claims.
One of the key manifestations of economic development, however, is the growth of enough employment opportunities. But the desperation among a section of the population to go abroad and get even lowly-paid jobs does indicate that there exists a large gap between the number of jobs created and the demand for the same. Moreover, the employment creation under the prevailing circumstances could be skewed one. For poor rural workforce, the mismatch, possibly, is far greater. So, the economic policies do deserve fine tuning so that the gaping hole in the rural employment situation can be mended as far as possible.