Migration as viable livelihood option

Shahiduzzaman Khan The International Migrant Day has just passed by, yet its significance has not been adequately felt by the labour-sending countries like Bangladesh. A serious concern is being raised by many over an increasing presence of illegal Bangladeshi migrant workers in foreign lands. Although there are no reliable statistics, the relevant government bodies put the number of such migrants rising at more than 0.1 million a year. There is no denying the fact that most forms of international migration are on the rise, but illegal migration is growing most rapidly around the globe. As migration pressures intensify in sending countries, many receiving countries are tightening admission requirements for legal migrants and asylum-seekers, of those entering or staying on illegally. Migration is increasingly being recognised as a viable livelihood option and one of the major development issues for Bangladesh. The growth in migration from Bangladesh and the increasing levels of remittances and consequent benefits to the society and the country are facing enormous challenges mainly due to the failure of the government to establish a clearly defined migration policy. Alongside regular and beneficial migration, irregular migration, informal channels of remittance and human trafficking continue to result in serious violations of migrants' rights. In recent years migration is making its way steadily to the top of the international affairs agenda, and the issue has been prioritised by most of the governments because the number of those from the underdeveloped countries who migrate for better economic prospects has grown immensely over the last few decades. Even though there are legislations to safeguard the interests of the migrant workers, the respective host governments are often rather negligent in implementing their provision. There are often complications regarding entry due to inappropriate visas, invalid paperwork and dubious job contracts issued by corrupt recruiting agents. Once in service, the main difficulties that are mostly reported by migrant workers are low, delayed, partial or prolonged non-payment of salaries as well as mistreatment by employers, extremely poor working conditions and lack of welfare provisions from the Bangladeshi missions. Although the country receives a substantial amount of foreign currency from its expatriate workers, it has done a little to channel such funds gainfully for the long term economic development of the country. There have been proposals made to draw funds of the expatriate workers into industrial bonds to be sold by the government. The same could notably increase the rate of remittances while giving a spur to industrialisation of the country, the pace of which is yet to be accelerated due to insufficiency of funds. But hard measures to this end and other ways to make the best possible use of the remitted moneys are yet to be taken and pursued. Global experts on migration, in an important meeting in Dhaka recently, made an eight-point recommendation that includes building of awareness among overseas jobs seekers, to ease the sufferings of the migrants and reduce the migration costs. The recommendations include close ties between labour-sending and receiving countries, a ban on purchasing visas, strengthening of pre-departure briefings, bilateral agreements and compliance with the guidelines of International Labour Organisation (ILO) to control recruiting agencies. The participants in the meeting did largely agree that migration costs should not be more than three months' salary of the job holders abroad. Despite so many assurances and efforts, high migration cost for the job-seekers abroad could not be brought down. Country's manpower minister and overseas job-related state agencies have failed otherwise to reduce ever-increasing migration cost so far, putting the intending job-seekers under severe strains. Labour-exporting countries like Bangladesh realise that malpractices, especially high migration costs in overseas recruitment, have been eating up the benefits of migration. There are enough evidence and also the processes for diagnosis to identify various forms of irregular practices that unduly interfere with the development gains of migration. In fact, the migrant workers are constrained to overstay their contracted periods, thinking that they would be able to repay their debts, in addition to remitting money to the country after meeting their subsistence costs. That is why they turn illegal migrants in the eye of the host country -- virtual fugitives from the law. In the process, the country earns a bad name which gets reflected in different ways, one of them being lowering the quota for Bangladeshi intake. While both the labour-sending and- receiving countries benefit much from labour migration, it is often the individual migrants who get overlooked. They undergo extensive financial hardship in order to migrate abroad due to exploitation and abuse in the recruitment sector. The root cause of high migration cost lies at the receiving-end, as brokers play a dominant role in raising the cost. Experts say if that cost could be lowered to zero, the migration expense could be cut significantly. On its part, the government is yet to reach a decision about what should constitute a reasonable migration cost that is affordable on the part of the aspirant migrant workers. Bangladesh's overseas missions have been requested to render their assistance in this connection. Bangladesh and other labour-sending countries need to have stronger regulations and their strict enforcement for effectively reducing the cost of migration. Local and global experts are of the opinion that the migration cost for a job seeker should be equivalent to two months' salaries for increasing the number of employments as well as for stopping illegal stay abroad. Thus, appropriate policies are urgently needed for implementation that would help keep the migration cost of the workers to a reasonable limit and make migration to be a viable livelihood option. szkhan@dhaka.net