Ending exploitation of migrant workers
Sunday, 28 March 2010
THE Bangladeshi workers living and working abroad number about 6.5 million. They sent home some $10.5 billion in remittances in 2009. The amount is more than 10 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). As such, they are one of the few pillars of strength holding up the narional economy. But the overseas workers, who are contributing so much to the overall economic well-being of the country, are otherwise a distressed lot in many cases. This is not to say that workers or their families are worse off generally after they take up foreign employment. But usually a very large number of them are found to be struggling to retain a part of their earnings or recover in time the amounts they had to spend in the first place for landing the foreign jobs.
A seminar held last week in Dhaka focused particularly on these aspects of exploitation of the workers. A visiting teacher of an American university stated in the seminar that on average a Bangladeshi worker spends US$ 2,300 or Taka 161,300 before going abroad with a job which is nearly double the maximum official cost of $1,215. Thus, a worker on getting a menial job after spending so much money, has to typically wait at least a year before he or she can think of recouping the amount spent on going abroad, not to think of any added monetary gains. The terms of conditions of many of the unskilled or little educated workers from Bangladesh are unfair. Manpower agents who send them abroad hardly discharge any service to the workers in these respects. The Bangladeshi missions abroad are also doing little or nothing in this area. The workers are more or less left to the wolves and their sufferings in many cases can be very bad. Although the country gets the benefit of their remittances, such workers or their families hardly experience any significant improvements in their standards of living or wealth acquisition after sacrificing so much.
There would be found so many Bangladeshi workers who had gone abroad borrowing money from even loan sharks to satisfy the greed of the so-called manpower agents. Officially, there are rules that a manpower exporter can take only a fixed sum of money as maximum fee for sending a worker abroad. But the rules are hardly enforced. A job-seeking worker in practice has to pay sometimes several times above the officially fixed amount to the manpower agent for the processing of his case, although he gets a receipt showing that he paid only the officially stipulated amount.
Therefore, the rule of the maximum payment to agents must be enforced unfailingly in all cases. The relevant agencies of the government should think up ways and means to this end and apply the same at the fastest. The banks may be persuaded and advised by the central bank to extend loans to foreign job seekers at reasonable rates of interest. The loans can be contracted for servicing by their takers on getting wages abroad. The manpower agents should also be obliged to ensure fair terms and conditions for the workers before their departure. Bangladeshi foreign missions need to be directed to discharge similar servicers in the interest of the migrant workers. In sum, all kinds of policies are badly needed for implementation that would help to keep reasonably limited the migration costs for the workers and for them to get reasonable returns in the form of earnings from their jobs.
A seminar held last week in Dhaka focused particularly on these aspects of exploitation of the workers. A visiting teacher of an American university stated in the seminar that on average a Bangladeshi worker spends US$ 2,300 or Taka 161,300 before going abroad with a job which is nearly double the maximum official cost of $1,215. Thus, a worker on getting a menial job after spending so much money, has to typically wait at least a year before he or she can think of recouping the amount spent on going abroad, not to think of any added monetary gains. The terms of conditions of many of the unskilled or little educated workers from Bangladesh are unfair. Manpower agents who send them abroad hardly discharge any service to the workers in these respects. The Bangladeshi missions abroad are also doing little or nothing in this area. The workers are more or less left to the wolves and their sufferings in many cases can be very bad. Although the country gets the benefit of their remittances, such workers or their families hardly experience any significant improvements in their standards of living or wealth acquisition after sacrificing so much.
There would be found so many Bangladeshi workers who had gone abroad borrowing money from even loan sharks to satisfy the greed of the so-called manpower agents. Officially, there are rules that a manpower exporter can take only a fixed sum of money as maximum fee for sending a worker abroad. But the rules are hardly enforced. A job-seeking worker in practice has to pay sometimes several times above the officially fixed amount to the manpower agent for the processing of his case, although he gets a receipt showing that he paid only the officially stipulated amount.
Therefore, the rule of the maximum payment to agents must be enforced unfailingly in all cases. The relevant agencies of the government should think up ways and means to this end and apply the same at the fastest. The banks may be persuaded and advised by the central bank to extend loans to foreign job seekers at reasonable rates of interest. The loans can be contracted for servicing by their takers on getting wages abroad. The manpower agents should also be obliged to ensure fair terms and conditions for the workers before their departure. Bangladeshi foreign missions need to be directed to discharge similar servicers in the interest of the migrant workers. In sum, all kinds of policies are badly needed for implementation that would help to keep reasonably limited the migration costs for the workers and for them to get reasonable returns in the form of earnings from their jobs.