Editorial
The lethal lucre of jobs abroad
Victims of cheating multiply
EVERY other day, we hear the sad tale of fortune seekers returning home from a totally frustrated pursuit of the El Dorado -- physically and mentally ruined with nothing to subsist on and up to their necks in debts. There is hardly any place in the world our youths cheated by manpower frauds have not been repatriated from. Many have landed in jail, requiring counsellor assistance that was hard to come by.
The traffickers' long hands in which the lives of gullible job seekers are put, spread from within the borders of the country over to inhospitable territories, clandestine routes and strange lands. Driven by grinding poverty and unemployment, our young men and women fall prey to traps laid out by so-called manpower agents painting a rosy picture of a career abroad they cannot resist. Our deceived youths have been stranded and dying in deserts, seaports, airports and along hostile land routes. The height of it was the story of freezing to death of Bangladeshis in an iced container.
With each passing day, a new destination is being added to the long list of countries from which Bangladeshi youths are being repatriated through courtesy of Assisted Voluntary Return(AVR) programme of International Orginisation for Migration (IMO). The last batch of 42 Bangladeshi immigrants who had bought visa, most probably from fraudulent agents for Iraq found themselves dumped in Kurdishtan, a place for which no manpower export is authorised by our government. They had to be brought back home by the IMO.
Successive governments' efforts at streamlining manpower export notwithstanding, the menace has grown into a hydra-headed monster undermining the image of the country and ruining lots of young people. We suggest a special cell comprising experts from public and private sectors, foreign office and IMO, if possible, be formed to devise ways and means for a fail-safe export of our manpower. Simultaneously, an awareness building move must be made by the government, local bodies and the print and electronic media to warn job seekers of the consequences of taking a plunge in the dark and making sure of being on the right course before leaving the country.
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