Editorial
Time to secure expatriate workers' rights
Global and national efforts should combine to ensure this
GIVEN the Bangladesh context, the issue of protecting migrant workers' rights assumes critical importance. It is particularly the Middle East which has been instrumental in changing the fortunes of tens of thousands of Bangladeshis through making available to them opportunities of employment over the past two decades and more. The social and financial progress that previously poor families have made as a result of their members' employment in a number of Middle Eastern countries is a reality that no one can ignore. It would be pertinent to ask, therefore, how vastly different matters might have been if such opportunities had not been there.
That being the truth, there is too the fact that of late Bangladeshi expatriate workers have been coming up against certain forms of behaviour in the countries where they are employed, behaviour that has all too often bordered on discrimination. They have been harassed, imprisoned and sacked from their jobs. In many instances, their employers have forced them to take jobs which clearly violated the terms of their contracts. Worse, a very large number of them have simply been rounded up and sent back home. In other words, Bangladesh's workers have lately found themselves at the receiving end of unacceptable behaviour, a fact that has been causing us in the country much and natural worry.
The worry was once more highlighted at the two-day national consultation on 'Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD)' in Dhaka last week. Foreign Minister Dipu Moni has been speaking for all of us through her assertion that migrant workers are not merely money-making machines but are also people who deserve to be treated the way everyone else is. And that basically is the point. If migrant workers are not treated with dignity and are not accorded human rights, a point will certainly come when it will all build up into a mess. Which essentially means that when the doors are closed, or nearly closed, on countries which need to send their citizens abroad for work, the result can only be social unrest in those countries. As it is, workers from Malaysia, Singapore and the UAE, besides those from Bangladesh, have returned home in large numbers over the past one year.
The need today for Bangladesh is to take all those steps that will secure the rights of migrant workers, and not just from Bangladesh, in the employing countries. That can be done through formulating as well as strengthening international instruments geared to protecting the rights of migrants. Words must now be replaced by deeds.
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