The recruiting agency's exaggeration about the benefits and perks from jobs on the one hand, and prospective workers' ambition and the government's lack of control over false practices on the other, deepen the helplessness of migrant workers.

Jahangir Alam, 32, is one of those helpless workers. Previously a bus driver of Dhaka-Manikganj route of Kunda, Savar, he paid the package price of Tk 2 lakh to migrate to Saudi Arabia in 2003, though the government-fixed rate for a visa is no more than Tk 70,000.

According to normal procedure, migration to a Gulf Country for work should not cost more than Tk 40-50 thousand, including service charges to the recruiting agencies for passport processing, the cost of airfare and a visa, as well as the agency's profit.

But a growing competition in the migrant visa business is helping to drive up prices, while also forcing down wages.

"The reason behind his [Jahangir] high charge is the middlemanship and competition among the recruiting agencies," says a former agent and repatriate Bangladeshi worker who worked in Saudi Arabia from 1988 to 1998.

Unveiling the mystery of higher charges, he told these correspondents that local recruiting agencies have many agents in the villages who lure prospective migrants with false promises of higher salaries and brighter futures.

"Agents have a contract with the recruiting agencies and take a share of the money. Say I have to pay the agency Tk 1.5 lakh, but I can motivate one to pay 1.75 lakh. I will get Tk 25,000. It depends on the techniques of an agent how much he will profit," the agent said, requesting anonymity.

There are over 700 hundred recruiting agencies in Bangladesh. Many have agents throughout the Gulf countries, who buy visas from employers at a higher rate, ranging from 500 to 800 rials, or Tk 7,500 to Tk 12,000.

The recruiting agencies found that they could make more profit by sending more workers from Bangladesh. "So, a competition began among the Bangladeshi recruiting agencies to buy more visas, and the Saudi employers saw that they could do business by selling those visas to the agencies."

Employers used to give visas and airfares to the workers free of cost 10 years ago, the village agent said. But once the sharp competition set in, visa prices began increasing while salaries for workers went down. The agents, meanwhile, were compelled to devise new tactics for alluring more workers from Bangladesh.

"Even the agencies advise the Saudi employers to decrease workers' salary, and employers also consider the agencies which can pay more for a visa on the one hand, but provide them with the workers at a lower salary on the other," the middleman said.

Some agencies also give migrant workers fake contract papers, promising higher salaries and facilities like medical care, housing, and food. The real contract, however, stipulates a much lower salary and sometimes none of the promised benefits, the agent described. Workers are often unaware of the difference, since many are illiterate or not given access to both contracts. Some contracts are written in Arabic, which most Bangladeshi workers cannot read.

According to a Human Rights Watch report, many migrant workers never see these Arabic-language contracts in their home countries or are forced to sign the documents when they reach Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.

Jahangir was one of the victims lured to Saudi Arabia on such false promises. His contract promised him a job as a driver, with the monthly salary of 1200 rial (Tk 18,000). In reality, however, he was sent to the desert and given a job rearing sheep. Working in the blistering heat was difficult, but he did not dare to return before making money to compensate the Tk 2 lakh he spent to get there, which he secured by selling land and borrowing from relatives at the monthly interest rate of 5 percent.

When, after passing 6 months in the desert, the skinny Alam strongly protested to his employer, he was handed over to the police, who put him in jail before finally sending him home to Bangladesh. He never received any pay.

"After landing at airport in Dhaka I took an auto-rickshaw and paid the driver by collecting money from my mother at home," he asserted to this correspondent with pain in his eyes.

Findings from numerous migrant rights organizations, including The Welfare Association of Repatriated Bangladeshi Employees (Warbe) and Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU), reveal thousands of similar cases across the country.

On the impact of this system, Warbe Chairman Syed Saiful Haque said every year thousands of repatriated people are losing everything they own and being marginalised in terms of their socio-economic status. "The lower middle class people who tend to upgrade their status are actually coming down."

He emphasised strong government regulation of the recruiting agencies through a legal framework and the need for non-government organisations to creating awareness among migrant workers and their families

According to Daliluddin Mondal, secretary in charge of the Ministry of Expatriate's Welfare and Overseas Employment, the government has implemented sufficient regulations to monitor the recruiting agencies, and so cannot do anything more.

"What can we do if people pay the higher amount of money when we always tell them to be aware in making any financial transaction, and to collect receipts from the agencies?"

However, he declined to elaborate when asked about specific measures taken by the government.