The New Nation - Internet Edition

It seems sufferings of expatriate Bangladeshi workers either for deception by recruiting agents, refusal to pay wages as per contract by employers, or inadequate response by the relevant Bangladeshi missions to solve their problems would never end.

The sufferings of several hundred Bangladeshis passing difficult days in tents near the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur became international news the other day, while about a hundred others were reported stranded at the Dubai airport.

In Kuala Lumpur, the suffering expatriate workers faced shortage of food. A charitable organisation served them food items on the Christmas Day. Some other people had served them food on the day of Eid-ul-Azha. Fact remains that all of them went abroad paying money to the expatriates' welfare fund which has now accumulated Taka 130 crore, according to the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training sources yesterday.

In Dubai, on the other hand, nine Bangladeshis were caught at the airport on Tuesday and eight of them were deported reportedly for not carrying valid travel and job documents. One hundred Bangladeshis are reported stranded at the same airport, according to sources. Dubai employs more than 600,000 Bangladeshis.

Manpower export accounts for more than five billion US dollars in foreign exchange a year, which is second only to earnings coming from garment exports. This calendar year the earnings from remittances sent by expatriate workers was nearly six billion dollars till the month of November, according to reliable sources. The sad plight of the overseas job workers who fall victims to deception, and the lazy response by the relevant agencies and the overseas mission is thus entirely unacceptable.

Complaints made by those passing miserable life in tents in Kuala Lumpur ranged from refusal of job by employers to payment of remuneration less than the contracted amounts. Most of them exhausted their cash money.

Sources at the Bureau of Manpower yesterday quoting the First Secretary of the Bangladesh Mission in Malaysia, Talat Mahmood, told The New Nation that they are looking after the matter and trying to solve the disputes between the employers and the workers.

When contacted first secretary of the Bangladesh mission in Dubai, Nasrin Jahan told The New Nation that no worker was stranded at the airport. "There are some people at the arrival lounge probably waiting for next destination but we have no scope of penetrating there," she said. "At present no single Bangladeshi is at the detention centre for deportation," she said.

Secretary of the Ministry of Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment Abdul Matin Chowdhury claimed that the stranded workers in Kuala Lumpur were telling misleading stories to the media. He said most of the workers in Malaysia went there with visa for plantation work. But now they do not want to do the work and want their passports back. Quoting the First Secretary of Bangladesh Embassy in Malaysia, Chowdhury said nearly 200 workers were taken away from the tent yesterday and 100 others moved to a rented hotel at Ampung.

The Bangladesh Mission is expected to have a meeting with Malaysian labour ministry officials to solve the problem, a Kuala Lumpur-based recruiting agent said yesterday.

The question is, why this late response to take care of the second most important sector of the economy. The Bureau of Manpower officials told The New Nation that they utilise the expatriates' welfare fund to allocate Taka 20,000 to ensure funeral of each expatriate who dies abroad, and pay Taka one lakh compensation to the family in case the employers do not pay the same. The Bangladesh missions abroad arrange the transport of bodies to dead expatriates in case their employers do not bear the costs, they said.

Recurrence of the expatriate workers being stranded abroad and lack of attention for them drive home the necessity of giving strong whipping to the missions abroad that they must be more responsive to the problems faced by expatriate workers. The stranded expatriate workers must be looked after and brought back home if employment cannot be found. In no case these workers should be left abandoned as has been the case in Malaysia and some countries in the Middle East. Strong punitive action should be taken against missions which fail to live up to their desired levels of efficiency in this regard.