Editorial
Why are Bangladeshi workers dying abroad?
The causes given lack credibility
The figures are simply staggering. In the first week of this month, the bodies of altogether 64 Bangladeshi expatriates working in various countries were brought back home. As a newspaper report makes it clear, on Friday alone a total of twelve such bodies arrived in Dhaka. The worry about these dead, indeed about the causes of their death, is only made worse considering that in the first three months of this year, January to March, the bodies of 635 Bangladeshi workers were brought back home. In April, 199 bodies were received at ZIA.
Various reasons have been advanced to explain the deaths of these expatriate workers. These include cardiac failures, accidents and other, largely unspecified causes. Those reasons do not of course satisfy either the families of the dead or citizens by and large. Which is why there is a huge need for an answer to the question of why such a big number of Bangladeshis have been dying abroad. For us in Bangladesh, it is always a matter of great sadness when even a single one of our workers dies abroad in inexplicable circumstances. One unnatural death is one too many. And here we have hundreds of deaths occurring and no one either in the host countries or among the Bangladesh authorities appears to be able to provide a logical explanation behind these tragic happenings. A crucial question now is whether the Bangladesh authorities are aware of the causes of these deaths. If they are not, which is more likely the case, why have they not taken steps to ascertain from the authorities in the Middle East, Malaysia, Korea and other countries the nature of the deaths? This need to probe the deaths is important because otherwise the impression grows that the poverty of the workers and their families does not greatly enthuse the authorities into action. In a social situation where the remittances of our expatriate workers acts as a spur to the national economy, such neglect of their welfare abroad is simply unpardonable.
A word about the role of the host countries is now in order. Since foreign workers are employed in their territory, it is their moral and legal responsibility to ensure that these workers enjoy minimum health service and earn the income they were promised at the time of their employment. It is true that these workers mostly work for private firms, but when they face hazards at the hands of these firms and find themselves at risk, the governments of the host countries must get to the bottom of such problems. After all, there is the great need for them to preserve their good image abroad.
The problem is a grave one. That is reason why we must plumb the depths of it. When a healthy man goes abroad to earn a living, we do not expect him to return home within months as a corpse.
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