Tormented there, neglected here

When 15-year-old Shima Begum, who worked as a house help in Jordan for 17 months, arrived in Dhaka on October 19, there was nobody waiting for her at the airport.

The orphan was crying in front of other passengers of the plane, saying her guardian uncle had forced her to go to Jordan. She feared that she would be sent back if she went to her Joynagar village home in Sunamganj.

Fellow passengers took Shima to the office of the Armed Police Battalion (APBn) at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.

Abdur Rahman, additional superintendent of police at the APBn, said, “Our staffers then informed Brac official Al Amin Noyon of the matter. Brac runs a training centre at Ashkona, Dakkhinkhan nearby [the airport].”

Shima's parents passed away when she was a child. Her uncle Abu Tayeb, who looked after her, forcibly sent her to Jordan in June last year, she told this correspondent at the centre.

Claiming that she was abused at the house where she worked, the teenager said she was not allowed to make calls to her family and felt lonely.

Instead of enjoying school and pursuing education, the girl was forced to work and send her earnings to the uncle.

Shima told The Daily Star that she was not paid anything in the first two months. Her uncle took whatever she earned in the next 14 months.

The girl was clueless when asked about her next course of action. She neither wanted to go back to her village nor was interested in working abroad.

Shima tried to kill herself the night she was taken to the training centre, said Noyon, information officer of migration programme at Brac.

The next day, he took Shima to the Expatriates' Welfare Desk at the airport.

Tanvir Hossain, assistant director at the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), said, Shima was sent to Kurmitola General Hospital that day. There too, she tried to take her life.

The following day she was admitted to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Her passport says her age is 27 but she is actually 15, a cousin of Shima told this newspaper.

To migrate to the Middle East as a domestic help, Bangladeshi women must be between 25 and 45 years of age; hence the fraudulence was done.

Shima is one of many females suffering from physical and mental illnesses after returning from the Middle East.

ASP Abdur Rahman said the APBn at the Dhaka airport deals with 10 to 12 unwell returnees every month.

Shariful Islam Hasan, head of Brac's migration programme, said, “There are widespread allegations that different forms of sexual, physical and mental abuses are unleashed on female workers in the Middle East.”

According to him, since January, over 1,500 female workers have returned home enduring abuse in Middle Eastern countries, particularly Saudi Arabia.

“Many of them have been impregnated; they return with babies, injuries, and mental disorders. Even their families show unwillingness to accept them.”

It is high time the government sets up specialised centres to provide such victims with necessary medical and psychological support, he recommended.

Calls to rehabilitate such workers have been loud for long but authorities have remained largely silent, he added. “Brac is trying to provide some emergency support, but it lacks funds.”

The government is more focused on getting remittance and less concerned about migrants' welfare, Hasan claimed.

As per BMET data, one crore Bangladeshis, including five lakh women, work abroad and send about $14 billion remittance annually.

Jahirul Islam, director at the Wage Earners' Welfare Board, said, “We are planning to draft a rehabilitation programme and setting up a victim support centre at the airport.”

Asked what was causing the delay, he said, “We cannot make hasty decisions. First, requirements of returnees need to be assessed.”