Female migrant workers suffer for local brokers
Nargis Akther, a 28-year-old housewife from Munshiganj, had flown to Abu Dhabi over a year ago with borrowed money, hoping that it would bring financial solvency to her family.
She has returned home, but with harrowing experience and some misery for herself instead.
Nargis went to Abu Dhabi through a local agent to work there as a house worker spending Tk 80,000, which she borrowed by mortgaging a piece of land to local creditors.
A few months ago, she came back almost empty handed.
“I have to work day and night. Madam (house owner) scolded, even beat me up if I failed to follow her command”, she said. “I fell sick as I could not take food available there”.
After four months, Nargis, returned home, but the house owner gave her only two months' salary (Tk 24,000).
Her miseries do not end here.
Her husband drove her out of house, as she made a "waste" of the hard-earned money. A mother of two children, she is now living at her father's house with the loan overhead.
Like Nargis, some 15-20 victimised female migrant workers narrated their bitter experiences abroad at a consultation programme at the capital's Cirdap auditorium yesterday.
Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Programme (OKUP) and IMA Research Foundation jointly organised the programme, “Legal Protection and Arbitration for Victimised Women Migrant Workers”.
A huge number of local agents (broker), which used to manage clients for recruiting agencies, are mainly responsible for the miseries of the women workers abroad, said
Shakirul Islam, chairman of OKUP.
“Providing false information about the overseas job, they (local agents) manage false training certificates, which create problems for the job seekers”, he said.
Over two lakh female migrant workers are working across the world, while more than 20,000 female workers are going abroad annually, Shakirul said.
Kazi Abul Kalam, deputy secretary to the expatriates' welfare and overseas employment ministry, said a total of 14 recruiting agencies had licence to send women workers abroad.
The government can take action against those listed agencies but it has very little to do with the others, he said. But the government is going to amend the Emigration Ordinance, 1982 so that the non-listed agencies could be brought under the purview of the law, he added.
Zafar Ahmed Khan, secretary to the ministry; Oman Faruque Chowdhury, executive director of OKUP; and Disha Sonata Farooque, national programme officer of International Organisation for Migration (IOM), also spoke on the occasion.
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