Manpower sector needs urgent overhauling
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
Syed Fattahul Alim
EIGHTEEN young men mostly from Chapainawabganj district have sent home an SOS message from faraway Kurdistan of war ravaged Iraq. They are trapped in that troubled part of the Middle East. All of those young people are in their thirties and left Bangladesh in search of job in the Middle East.
Those job seekers in foreign lands were cheated by an unscrupulous local manpower-recruiting agency. In fact, these young people did not know that they were heading for such a disastrous consequence after each of them had paid Tk 250,000 to a manpower-recruiting agency in Dhaka.
However, their supposed destination was not Kurdistan. They were conned into paying the money to a fraudulent recruiting agent who assured them of jobs in Kuwait. After payment of the money, they were later told that Kuwait government had cancelled the job contract. However, they had no dearth of job offer! Now the desperate young men, who had meanwhile sold their paternal properties or taken loan from local moneylenders at exorbitantly high rate of interests to pay the recruiting agent, were ready to accept any kind of job offer abroad. They had still a flicker of hope that after all the recruiting agent would not cheat them and that they would finally reach the shores of the land of plenty. Small wonder that the eighteen young men cast their lot with the whims and caprices of the recruiting agency concerned and accepted the second option for work in Baghdad where they would work at the US military camp.
Accordingly, they boarded a flight bound for Dubai, where they were kept for seven days. Later, they were taken to Baghdad and kept in seclusion for five days. Finally, they found themselves in the war-torn, famine-stricken Kurdistan. For all practical purposes, theses hapless young men are in captivity in a place that promises them no future. The plight of these young people came to light after one of them somehow managed to make a telephone call from Kurdistan to Dhaka.
The pathetic story of the eighteen Bangladeshi young men is of very recent origin. Their ordeal began once they availed themselves of the Dubai-bound plane on June 2, 2007, from the Zia International Airport.
There is no end to the tragedy surrounding the ill-fated job-seekers abroad. In most cases, the local recruiting agents commit such acts of monstrosity against their own compatriots. The government and the public who are thus being cheated again and again are long aware of such tragedies. But to no avail. Nothing has changed. Such atrocities are being committed even at a time when the incumbent caretaker government is waging a crusade against corruption and fighting crime at every level of society, politics and administration. Hearing the above-narrated ordeal that the eighteen young Bangladeshis have been going through very recently, it is hard to believe that the ongoing drive against corruption and crime has left any impact on a section of recruiting agencies who are still carrying on with their evil practice.
While the government needs to swing into action and do everything to rescue the young Bangladeshis trapped in Kurdistan, it must also arrange exemplary punishment for the criminal recruiting agency concerned. But punishing one or two criminal rackets passing for manpower recruiting agency is not the end of the story. In fact, similar stories of cheating the overseas job seekers are so rampant that punishing the culprit after the offence is committed is like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. There is something seriously flawed in the entire process of sending people abroad for jobs after they have already turned pauper while making payments to the manpower agents in the hope of getting a job in the Middle East, Southeast Asia or Europe.
It would be worthwhile to mention another report of still graver import about the uncertain lives of about 100,000 Bangladeshis, who have become illegal immigrant workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). If one looks into the individual stories of how such a large number of expatriate Bangladeshis had fallen into such a wretched state in a foreign land, one would discover identical tales of cheating. In most cases, the job seekers had not signed contract papers from the overseas employers. Except for the hollow promises made by the manpower brokers and the middlemen concerned, the job specifications in most cases remain tentative.
Many of the illegal Bangladeshi workers facing the dark prospect of deportation from the UAE within two and a half months had reached there as tourists instead of workers with job contracts with the overseas employers. They are now facing the inevitable. Upon expiry of their tourist visas, their stay has naturally become illegal in the host country. The future awaiting these workers is very bleak. Some local firms will take advantage of the vulnerability of these illegal workers in the UAE. These Bangladeshis will be ready to accept any job that may assure them of extended stay in that country. From then on will start another phase of misery in their lives.
Those among the illegal Bangladeshi workers in the Emirates who will choose the life of a fugitive will be doomed from day one. With the jobs they might get, the runaway expatriate Bangladeshis will hardly be able to live below the subsistence level. Fear of jail and deportation will pursue them constantly. More often than not, the agents of the culprit recruiting firms in Bangladesh , who are primarily responsible for their woes, will again come forward to push them into yet worse situations than what they had already passed through.
What is the source of strength of these fake manpower-recruiting firms? This practice of cheating fellow countrymen in the name of providing jobs abroad started since the mad rush for the Middle East and other parts of the world began in the mid-seventies. Many governments have come and gone in the meanwhile, but the wickedness on the part of a section of the so-called manpower recruiting agencies could never be stopped. Had there ever been a proper survey on the families that have thus fallen victim to, it would unravel another Bangladesh where only the gloom and doom prevails. Thousands of families have turned destitute overnight losing their lands, homesteads and whatever other resources they possessed to such fake organisations and their intermediaries. The situation has not improved though the craze for overseas job seeking is well into its third decade. Even after all these years, the successive governments that took office in the intervening time could not device a foolproof system for recruiting Bangladeshi workers for overseas jobs.
The incumbent government is learnt to have been planning a major reform in the manpower-exporting sector as well as in the rules and procedures of emigration. The Ministry of Expatriate Welfare has formed a committee headed by a responsible official to look into problems including high cost of migration to overseas job-providing countries like Malaysia. It has been learnt that the ministry is also mulling over formation of another committee to look into the overall situation in the manpower sector including its problems and irregularities. Steps are also underway to communicate with the International Organisation for Migration for further consultation on cross-border issues involving labour migration.
All these measures are long overdue. However, it is still better late than never. While forming the many committees, the focus of the authorities should be to protect the poor overseas job seekers from the tyranny of a section of unscrupulous as well as fake recruiting agents. The basic question that demands immediate addressing is: Why must the poor overseas jobseekers from rural Bangladesh have to buy their job contracts, if any, at such a high price? The operation of middlemen has to be stopped. And, gradually the operation of the private recruiting firms has to be limited to that of the clearing and forwarding agents in this sector.
The job seekers should be able to have their employments abroad free of cost, except for a minimal fee and the travel cost. Considering the huge amount of remittance the government receives from the expatriate wage earners, the prospective jobseekers abroad also deserve to be provided with easy credit from the lending agencies so that they may pay for their travel and other costs until they reach the countries providing them the jobs.
EIGHTEEN young men mostly from Chapainawabganj district have sent home an SOS message from faraway Kurdistan of war ravaged Iraq. They are trapped in that troubled part of the Middle East. All of those young people are in their thirties and left Bangladesh in search of job in the Middle East.
Those job seekers in foreign lands were cheated by an unscrupulous local manpower-recruiting agency. In fact, these young people did not know that they were heading for such a disastrous consequence after each of them had paid Tk 250,000 to a manpower-recruiting agency in Dhaka.
However, their supposed destination was not Kurdistan. They were conned into paying the money to a fraudulent recruiting agent who assured them of jobs in Kuwait. After payment of the money, they were later told that Kuwait government had cancelled the job contract. However, they had no dearth of job offer! Now the desperate young men, who had meanwhile sold their paternal properties or taken loan from local moneylenders at exorbitantly high rate of interests to pay the recruiting agent, were ready to accept any kind of job offer abroad. They had still a flicker of hope that after all the recruiting agent would not cheat them and that they would finally reach the shores of the land of plenty. Small wonder that the eighteen young men cast their lot with the whims and caprices of the recruiting agency concerned and accepted the second option for work in Baghdad where they would work at the US military camp.
Accordingly, they boarded a flight bound for Dubai, where they were kept for seven days. Later, they were taken to Baghdad and kept in seclusion for five days. Finally, they found themselves in the war-torn, famine-stricken Kurdistan. For all practical purposes, theses hapless young men are in captivity in a place that promises them no future. The plight of these young people came to light after one of them somehow managed to make a telephone call from Kurdistan to Dhaka.
The pathetic story of the eighteen Bangladeshi young men is of very recent origin. Their ordeal began once they availed themselves of the Dubai-bound plane on June 2, 2007, from the Zia International Airport.
There is no end to the tragedy surrounding the ill-fated job-seekers abroad. In most cases, the local recruiting agents commit such acts of monstrosity against their own compatriots. The government and the public who are thus being cheated again and again are long aware of such tragedies. But to no avail. Nothing has changed. Such atrocities are being committed even at a time when the incumbent caretaker government is waging a crusade against corruption and fighting crime at every level of society, politics and administration. Hearing the above-narrated ordeal that the eighteen young Bangladeshis have been going through very recently, it is hard to believe that the ongoing drive against corruption and crime has left any impact on a section of recruiting agencies who are still carrying on with their evil practice.
While the government needs to swing into action and do everything to rescue the young Bangladeshis trapped in Kurdistan, it must also arrange exemplary punishment for the criminal recruiting agency concerned. But punishing one or two criminal rackets passing for manpower recruiting agency is not the end of the story. In fact, similar stories of cheating the overseas job seekers are so rampant that punishing the culprit after the offence is committed is like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. There is something seriously flawed in the entire process of sending people abroad for jobs after they have already turned pauper while making payments to the manpower agents in the hope of getting a job in the Middle East, Southeast Asia or Europe.
It would be worthwhile to mention another report of still graver import about the uncertain lives of about 100,000 Bangladeshis, who have become illegal immigrant workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). If one looks into the individual stories of how such a large number of expatriate Bangladeshis had fallen into such a wretched state in a foreign land, one would discover identical tales of cheating. In most cases, the job seekers had not signed contract papers from the overseas employers. Except for the hollow promises made by the manpower brokers and the middlemen concerned, the job specifications in most cases remain tentative.
Many of the illegal Bangladeshi workers facing the dark prospect of deportation from the UAE within two and a half months had reached there as tourists instead of workers with job contracts with the overseas employers. They are now facing the inevitable. Upon expiry of their tourist visas, their stay has naturally become illegal in the host country. The future awaiting these workers is very bleak. Some local firms will take advantage of the vulnerability of these illegal workers in the UAE. These Bangladeshis will be ready to accept any job that may assure them of extended stay in that country. From then on will start another phase of misery in their lives.
Those among the illegal Bangladeshi workers in the Emirates who will choose the life of a fugitive will be doomed from day one. With the jobs they might get, the runaway expatriate Bangladeshis will hardly be able to live below the subsistence level. Fear of jail and deportation will pursue them constantly. More often than not, the agents of the culprit recruiting firms in Bangladesh , who are primarily responsible for their woes, will again come forward to push them into yet worse situations than what they had already passed through.
What is the source of strength of these fake manpower-recruiting firms? This practice of cheating fellow countrymen in the name of providing jobs abroad started since the mad rush for the Middle East and other parts of the world began in the mid-seventies. Many governments have come and gone in the meanwhile, but the wickedness on the part of a section of the so-called manpower recruiting agencies could never be stopped. Had there ever been a proper survey on the families that have thus fallen victim to, it would unravel another Bangladesh where only the gloom and doom prevails. Thousands of families have turned destitute overnight losing their lands, homesteads and whatever other resources they possessed to such fake organisations and their intermediaries. The situation has not improved though the craze for overseas job seeking is well into its third decade. Even after all these years, the successive governments that took office in the intervening time could not device a foolproof system for recruiting Bangladeshi workers for overseas jobs.
The incumbent government is learnt to have been planning a major reform in the manpower-exporting sector as well as in the rules and procedures of emigration. The Ministry of Expatriate Welfare has formed a committee headed by a responsible official to look into problems including high cost of migration to overseas job-providing countries like Malaysia. It has been learnt that the ministry is also mulling over formation of another committee to look into the overall situation in the manpower sector including its problems and irregularities. Steps are also underway to communicate with the International Organisation for Migration for further consultation on cross-border issues involving labour migration.
All these measures are long overdue. However, it is still better late than never. While forming the many committees, the focus of the authorities should be to protect the poor overseas job seekers from the tyranny of a section of unscrupulous as well as fake recruiting agents. The basic question that demands immediate addressing is: Why must the poor overseas jobseekers from rural Bangladesh have to buy their job contracts, if any, at such a high price? The operation of middlemen has to be stopped. And, gradually the operation of the private recruiting firms has to be limited to that of the clearing and forwarding agents in this sector.
The job seekers should be able to have their employments abroad free of cost, except for a minimal fee and the travel cost. Considering the huge amount of remittance the government receives from the expatriate wage earners, the prospective jobseekers abroad also deserve to be provided with easy credit from the lending agencies so that they may pay for their travel and other costs until they reach the countries providing them the jobs.