Plight of Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia
Sunday, 19 August 2007
THE plight of those seeking jobs abroad is an old story. The jobseekers are, in most cases, either cheated by recruiting agencies or manpower agents at home or employers abroad. A good number of these jobseekers lose everything in the process and on many occasions land in jails abroad mainly due to fraudulent activities of the manpower agents. In many cases the local manpower recruiters and the so-called employers abroad work hand in glove to cheat the poor jobseekers. At times, the fake recruiters add yet another element -- physical torture -- to the list of miseries of expatriate workers.
Recently, stories about deception of a large number of Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia have hit the newspaper headlines in Dhaka as well as Kula Lumpur. Reports said that about 500 Bangladeshi workers have been kept in confinement for months together in a number of private houses in Kuala Lumpur by their so-called employers. Workers, who paid nearly Tk. 200,000 each for securing a job, grouped into 20 to 25, have been forced to stay in a small room and they are being served food only once a day. The Malaya Mail, a popular Malaysian daily, has recently published a story, headlined, 'Locked up like animals', detailing the plight of the Bangladeshi workers. Meanwhile, about 300 Bangladeshi workers with their dream shattered by the dishonest recruiting agencies have been staging a sit-in demonstration in front of the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur for about a week. They now want the Commission to send them back home.
Things went wrong since Malaysia lifted its restriction on the recruitment of Bangladesh workers about a year back after much lobbying by the top leaders of the immediate past political government. The Malaysian authorities expressed its desire to take more than 0.1 million workers and set a time-limit for such recruitment. Lots of problems, including irregularities on the part of local recruiting agencies and the outsourcing companies in Malaysia and rivalries among the manpower agents over the share in the pie, cropped up, resulting in a slowdown in the recruitment process. However, the unscrupulous manpower agents taking full advantage of the situation sent hundreds of workers through arrangements with fake employers in Malaysia. All these happened mainly due to the failure on the part of the official agency concerned and the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) to monitor activities of the manpower agencies properly and punish the wrongdoers. The death of 11 Bangladeshi fortune seekers in the Mediterranean in December 2005, return of 24 others from the jaw of death after being dumped into the Sahara Desert by the human traffickers, and similar reports about cruelty of fake manpower agents could not make these agencies to be serious about their duties and responsibilities and help prevent irregularities in manpower recruitment.
Bangladesh has a poor global image because of frequent natural calamities, systemic corruption, political instability, high incidence of poverty etc. What often comes out in the international news media about the desperate attempts by Bangladeshi fortune seekers to cross into alien countries illegally does, unfortunately again, furthermore impair its image. Outsiders would naturally draw a conclusion that the situation is so grim in Bangladesh that its people are ready to risk their lives to get a foothold in any other place in the world, including a war-torn African country like Sudan. The incumbent government is trying to straighten out things in many areas of national life. It would be doing a great job if it took actions to flush fake manpower agents out of business.
Recently, stories about deception of a large number of Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia have hit the newspaper headlines in Dhaka as well as Kula Lumpur. Reports said that about 500 Bangladeshi workers have been kept in confinement for months together in a number of private houses in Kuala Lumpur by their so-called employers. Workers, who paid nearly Tk. 200,000 each for securing a job, grouped into 20 to 25, have been forced to stay in a small room and they are being served food only once a day. The Malaya Mail, a popular Malaysian daily, has recently published a story, headlined, 'Locked up like animals', detailing the plight of the Bangladeshi workers. Meanwhile, about 300 Bangladeshi workers with their dream shattered by the dishonest recruiting agencies have been staging a sit-in demonstration in front of the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur for about a week. They now want the Commission to send them back home.
Things went wrong since Malaysia lifted its restriction on the recruitment of Bangladesh workers about a year back after much lobbying by the top leaders of the immediate past political government. The Malaysian authorities expressed its desire to take more than 0.1 million workers and set a time-limit for such recruitment. Lots of problems, including irregularities on the part of local recruiting agencies and the outsourcing companies in Malaysia and rivalries among the manpower agents over the share in the pie, cropped up, resulting in a slowdown in the recruitment process. However, the unscrupulous manpower agents taking full advantage of the situation sent hundreds of workers through arrangements with fake employers in Malaysia. All these happened mainly due to the failure on the part of the official agency concerned and the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) to monitor activities of the manpower agencies properly and punish the wrongdoers. The death of 11 Bangladeshi fortune seekers in the Mediterranean in December 2005, return of 24 others from the jaw of death after being dumped into the Sahara Desert by the human traffickers, and similar reports about cruelty of fake manpower agents could not make these agencies to be serious about their duties and responsibilities and help prevent irregularities in manpower recruitment.
Bangladesh has a poor global image because of frequent natural calamities, systemic corruption, political instability, high incidence of poverty etc. What often comes out in the international news media about the desperate attempts by Bangladeshi fortune seekers to cross into alien countries illegally does, unfortunately again, furthermore impair its image. Outsiders would naturally draw a conclusion that the situation is so grim in Bangladesh that its people are ready to risk their lives to get a foothold in any other place in the world, including a war-torn African country like Sudan. The incumbent government is trying to straighten out things in many areas of national life. It would be doing a great job if it took actions to flush fake manpower agents out of business.