Editorial
Deportation of Bangladeshi workers unacceptable
It is time the Foreign Office took a bold stand
THE crisis resulting from the agitation by Bangladeshi workers in Kuwait has clearly taken a turn for the unsavoury. With the Kuwaiti authorities deporting as many as a hundred of the workers, with the very real possibility of more such workers being forced to come back home, matters get extremely awkward for relations between the two countries. Conditions ought not to have come to such a pass, given that the workers, at their wits' end, were only agitating for better wages and living conditions in the state. As far as issues of this kind go, it should have been the responsibility of Kuwait to look into the workers' grievances and so prevent the crisis from taking a bigger shape. That has unfortunately not been done. And what is certainly unacceptable now is the deportation measure.
Which brings us to the matter of what Bangladesh's Foreign Office has been doing, or not doing, in the matter of raising the issue firmly with the Kuwaiti authorities. We have earlier written of the need for the FO to ask the Kuwaiti diplomatic mission for clarifications or explanations on the matter. There is precious little sign that such action has been taken. Indeed, the virtual silence of the Foreign Office on the problems confronting our workers in Malaysia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait is as baffling as it is troubling. The simplest move that Dhaka could have made was to go for a study of how workers from other countries are treated in the Middle East and what the nature of the discrimination against Bangladeshis in terms of wages and behaviour is. Judging by the ill-treatment meted out to our workers in the Middle East, the question of whether these hapless people are regarded as bonded labour in the region will arise. Neither the Middle Eastern authorities nor their Bangladeshi counterparts have lifted a finger to address the grievances of our workers. That is unacceptable, morally unethical behaviour.
The Bangladesh government is in huge need of a strategy to combat the situation. Pusillanimity in dealing with such governments as those in Kuwait can only embolden them into more bad behaviour toward our hard-working citizens. Let a strong stand be taken. And that can begin by asking that the firms which employed the deported Bangladeshis give them the compensation they are morally entitled to, together with their arrears in pay. Will our Foreign Office adopt such a bold stand?
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