Deaths in the Mediterranean

Less than a month into the harrowing Mediterranean tragedy, yet another horrible story came to light as 24 Bangladeshi job-seekers returned home after languishing for months in jails in the western African country of Mali. On a similar errand and dumped in deep deserts of Sahara, they were rescued by police and put into custody. They were brought back home under the good offices of IOM (International Organisation for Migration).

These two incidents raised many questions and prompted frenzied attempts by different authorities to solve the whole problem in one go. Alarm bells tolled in every corner of the administration and the media flared the issues that gave the impression that anybody involved in sending people on jobs abroad or selling air-tickets is perpetrating a crime by exploiting gullible poor people of the country. Hectic inter-ministerial meetings were held and sweeping directives were passed to law enforcing agencies to curb errant and unauthorised travel and recruiting agents. This perhaps offered a heyday for our law enforcers who landed in hordes on the hubs of travel and recruiting in the city.

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They were charged for holding so many passports of so many persons. Very conveniently, neither the travel agents' nor the recruiting agents' ordinances allow them to hold passport of their clients. This appears as a mockery of law. Almost always the first question these service providers have to ask a client is: 'Do you have passport?' Ironically, they are denied the legal right to hold the basic tool of their trade. No visa can be stamped or obtained without passport nor any airlines would issue tickets without verifying visa in the passport. Without passport, there can be no traveling or recruiting business. Naturally, every office, small or big, holds passports of its clients. This loophole or inadequacy of law gives the law enforcers a scope to frame a 'case' against any travel or recruiting agency anytime.

The sequence of scenario that follows is anybody's guess. If the unfortunate owner could buy out his exit, he is lucky to have saved his prestige and goodwill. If not, a picture of handcuffed owner/staff of the agency with stacks of 'fake' passports splashed in the front pages of the dailies next day is not usually an exception. In many of our reports, any passport seized in any context is termed as 'fake'. No need to await an investigation to arrive at this conclusion. And if the seized 'fake' passports are in hundreds in a single haul, nothing can be of better 'news value'.

In a country that exports about three hundred thousand recruits annually, possession of hundreds of passports by a moderate-size recruiting agency is a very common phenomenon. The frenzy generated by the tragedy at the Mediterranean, resultant crack down on recruiting and traveling agencies and the flare up by the media have shifted the whole focus from the material context of the incidents. After ATAB pointed out in a press conference that there exists more than one thousand unauthorised travel agencies all over the country, who are not even their members, the administration woke up. Hectic activities are afoot to track them down. Why now? Why not before? Why we have to act so pious after a tragedy? This is how the whole sequel of the tragic incident was played in home front. Such activities sent panic among both recruiting and travel agencies. Result is 32 percent slide in manpower export in the month of March alone.

Recurrence of such incidents is not for the first time in Bangladesh, nor are such cases monopoly of this country. How can we forget the past instances of desperate job seekers trying to escape the country by hiding in the wheel box of aircraft and frozen to death at high altitude? Only the other day 19 people, out of 76 in a trailer van, died from suffocation at doorsteps of the US on the Mexican border. They were desperate poor people from Latin America, trying to enter USA to sell their labour. There are innumerable instances of people from third world countries trying to enter first world countries in search of better earning and better living, and dying horrible deaths en route. It is symptomatic of the increasing divide between rich and poor countries. The greater is the divide, more prolific will be such desperate adventures and the number of deaths.

One feels more saddened by the loss of eleven enterprising youths. They had chosen this dangerous journey instead of opting to be Ershad Sikders of the society. Of late, there is growing activity among NGOs and international organisations to measure what extent Bangladesh has veered as a trafficking nation. Hectic seminars are afoot. Lots of papers are being printed towards developing modules for awareness building at grassroots level against trafficking. Trafficking is a symptom, not a disease. Hunger knows no awareness. Bangladesh would have been more benefited, if the seminars were focused on how to create more opportunities in orderly migration.

The real solution to human trafficking lies in creating opportunities for the people, especially in regular migration. Until now, apathy of developed countries has relegated to backbench the issue of mobility of labour as a facilitator to globalisation. Nevertheless, the economic realities are catching up fast. Countries with edge in cheap labour are occupying world consumer markets. Tremendous opportunities are opening up for temporary labour migration to developed countries. Bangladesh should prudently forge negotiations with developed countries on WTO platform for liberalisation of labour movement.

No logic, statistics, apathy or media report can downplay the present role of manpower export in our national economy. Keeping aside nett contribution through remittances to the tune of US$ 3.6 billion a year, the multiplier economic effect of this sector in the lowest segment of the society can hardly be matched by any other sector. Even our RMG export is, in fact, a different form of manpower export. The RMG manufacturers are essentially providers of out-sourced tailoring services to foreign buyers. The only sustainable resource we have in abundance for export is our human resource. The easiest and shortest route to economic take-off of the country lies in how fast we can develop and deploy our human resources abroad.

It is painful to observe how incomplete and hazy knowledge can cripple an important sector. Many have little idea of the difference in the role and activities of recruiting and travel agencies; that two different ministries regulate travel agencies and recruiting agencies. Our policy makers played the same way and instead of identifying true perpetrators in the Mediterranean tragedy and investigating the matter properly, sent the law enforcers to terrorize a sensitive sector.

Wrong focus can kill the golden-egg laying goose!

Abdul Alim is an EC Member, BAIRA