Issue recruitment cards for construction workers

Rights activists yesterday demanded that the government must make a mandatory rule for the employers to issue recruitment cards to the construction workers with a view to eliminating exploitations in the sector.

Thousands are working in the construction sector without any formal recruitment procedure and thus being deprived of their basic rights and exploited by the employers, contractors and sub-contractors, they observed at a workshop, organised by RMMRU on "Recruitment of Internal Migrant Construction Workers in Bangladesh," at the capital's Cirdap auditorium.

"The employers have a little interest in recruiting workers directly. They prefer hiring through middlemen," said Prof CR Abrar, executive director of Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, adding, "We didn't find any worker who was hired with a letter of appointment from the employer. They are working without any formal recognition and not getting basic facilities."

Prof Abrar said the recruitment of the workers is generally held through their relatives, friends or acquaintances and the middlemen, without any better negotiations for the wages.

"There is no government monitoring system in this sector where about two million people are working, he added quoting a Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) report about the country's labour forces published in 2014.

The workers are facing serious problems in terms of their security and identity documents, wages and living conditions, other benefits etc, according to a RMRRU study findings, collected from a field work in Dhaka between May and July last year.

"There is no fixed minimum wages. The contractors or sub-contractors determine the wages and the dates for their payments," it mentioned. If the contractors or sub-contractors exploit the workers, there is less scope of getting justice as the workers have no legal documents for the recruitment, the report said.

Addressing the programme, noted rights activists Hamida Hossain said the government should make it a mandatory rule to issue a letter of recruitment if there is no scope of formulating a definite law soon. Mamun-Al-Rashid, who works as a government relations and policy advisor, said when the workers become victims of any accident, they have little options to get legal facilities due to lack of formal recruitment documents. Even the police have to register a worker's death as an unnatural case for not having legal documents, he added.

Gonoshasthaya Kendra Founder Dr Zafrullah Chowdhury, Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies assistant executive director Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmad, Jahangirnagar University teacher Mirza Taslima Sultana also spoke.