September 30, 2012
M. Serajul Islam
What is happening in this
country? Thousands of crores of Taka are swindled from the banks and nothing
happens. When there is widespread demand to bring the Hall Mark people to face
the law; the Government at first called the public outcry as “nonsense” and
then gave the alleged swindlers 15 days to repay. The alleged swindlers have
now asked 20 years to do so and the Government is silent! When people close to
the party in power and some indirectly in control of the Security Exchange
Commission swindled the public of thousands of crores, most of it money of poor
and ordinary people, the government’s response was to protect the swindlers leaving
those who were swindled to rue for themselves.
The Ministry of
Expatriate Affairs did something exceptional recently against this trend. For a
government facing censure from the public for being soft on those who are
allegedly cheating and swindling the poor and the unfortunate, it did something
pro-poor and pro-the unfortunate. It
signed an agreement with the Malaysian Government under which it will send
Bangladeshis to work in Malaysia on a government to government basis, sidelining
what the Minister called “dalals”, a stinking Bangla equivalent of “agent” or “middle-man”.
What was music to the ears of the millions of our unfortunate fellow citizens
who hope to go abroad to work, the Minister said that each Bangladeshi to be sent
to Malaysia under this programme would pay Taka 35-40,000 each and would be
able to serve in that country for 5 years, enough to pay back the money they
would have to loan to go abroad and bring money back in the bargain.
The Bangladesh
Association for International Recruiting Agents (BAIRA) held a meeting against
this decision of the Ministry of Expatriate Affairs that would keep them out of
the new arrangement. They threatened the Ministry that if they are not allowed
to take part in the new arrangement, they would stop sending manpower to the
other countries. BAIRA also stated that the
Taka 35- 40,000 that the Government has agreed as the amount to be paid by the
workers is high. BAIRA said that if their members are allowed to enter the export
of manpower to Malaysia, the costs would be between Taka 10 and 15 thousand.
BAIRA’s figures on costs are
difficult to believe. Investigative
reports on export of manpower have documented that on an average our workers paid
nearly Taka 2 lacs to manpower agents to go to Malaysia in the past while the
government charged Taka 84,000. These
reports have also revealed that compared to workers from other South Asian countries,
Bangladeshi workers pay substantially more for working in the Middle East. That
is not the end of their miseries. Bangladeshi workers often find on their
arrival in their destinations that they are paid much less than what the
manpower agents promised them. Many of these workers go abroad selling their
meager possessions or loaning money at exorbitant rates of interests from money
lenders. When they find that they are not paid their promised salaries, many
run away from their jobs to find better paying jobs to pay back their loans.
In Saudi Arabia, there are over two lac
Bangladeshi workers who are running from the law as illegal immigrants. The
Prime Minister took up this problem with the King of Saudi Arabia in April
2009. On return home, the Foreign Minister stated in the media, that upon the
Prime Minister’s intervention, the issue would be resolved. It has not been. In
fact, in the meantime, the conditions of Bangladeshi workers in Saudi Arabia
have worsened. Even where Bangladeshi workers receive their agreed salaries,
they are often subjected to discriminations. Workers from Bangladesh are paid
substantially less than workers from other countries working in the same type
of jobs in the Middle East.
There is no dearth to
loud claims from the government and the manpower agents of their great
contribution to our economy through foreign remittance of our workers abroad
that they help send. There is sadly no
concern from anyone, the government, the manpower agents, about the unfortunate
realities in the lives of our workers abroad. In fact, quite a good number of
these workers regularly die in their places of work as a result of the tensions
they are subjected to once they find that the manpower agents who sent the
abroad have cheated them.
We send the third largest
number of workers after Saudi Arabia and UAE, to Malaysia. The Malaysian
experience for our workers has been very sad and unfortunate. No one who went to Malaysia was able to go
there paying the amount that BAIRA has sated it its press conference. They paid
much higher charges. Many of them were also cheated. Manpower exporters in collusion with their
collaborators in Malaysia used “call visas” to send thousands of Bangladeshis
to Malaysia who became illegal immediately upon arriving in the country. Call
visas are not work visas that are issued to employers in Malaysia to let them
import manpower from overseas but only after completing many formalities that
takes a long time before they can actually bring manpower to the country.
Thus when Bangladeshis
arrived in Malaysia on “call visas”, they had no jobs and many just had to turn
illegal in order to earn the money they loaned to pay the manpower agents. Many
of these unfortunate Bangladeshis eventually lost their lives or fell into the
hands of the authorities and faced untold miseries. As the number of illegal
Bangladeshis mounted, the Malaysians imposed many obstacles and at various
times even threatened to stop recruiting manpower from Bangladesh.
Malaysia is heavily
dependent on foreign workers. Bangladeshis have a good reputation as foreign
workers. It is because of this good reputation that Malaysia has now decided to
open its manpower market to Bangladesh and made the offer on a government to
government basis so that the nexus of evil on both sides, between our manpower
agents and their partners in Malaysia are not allowed to interfere in the
business against the interests of the workers.
The Malaysian initiative
is one for which the Ministry of Expat Affairs deserve to be congratulated. It
should dismiss the BAIRA threat because it is BAIRA that would need to make the
Ministry happy to continue business in which they have been minting money at
the misery of the workers. The Ministry should
realize its limitations because it would be impossible for it to send the huge
number of workers to Malaysia on its own. It would have to allow the manpower
agents to implement a major part of the agreement but in its terms. It should set
the model structure for pay and conditions of workers by sending the number of
workers it can handle so that the manpower agents are compelled to work within
it and uphold the interests of the workers instead of making them the victims of
their hugely lucrative business.
In fact, the Ministry
should negotiate with other manpower importing countries to enter into more
government to government agreements to set the same model for manpower business
as the Malaysian one (assuming one would be set) so that the workers whose
blood and sweat gives Bangladesh those US$ 11 billion in foreign remittance so
crucial to its economic development are not made the victims of the manpower
business as they are at present. The manpower business does not have any legal
framework. Thus we see many reports of our workers being cheated regularly but
no instance of those who cheat being punished. There is also need to fast track
cases in manpower business for protecting the interest of the workers. Finally,
it is also important to bring the Bangladesh Embassies into the loop not for damage
control but as an integral part of the structure where the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and the Ministry of Expat Affairs would work as a team that it does not at present..
The writer is a former
Secretary and Ambassador.
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