Mortality rate among expat workers

AS reported in a Bengali daily recently, nearly 14,000 expatriate workers have died over the last five years while on the job. The minister for expatriate welfare however said in parliament that the figure is below the national death rate and should not be read out of context. Yet, we cannot take comfort in the fact that 94 per cent of these deaths are stated to be “unnatural”. A large portion of the deaths have resulted from ailments like heart attack, brain haemorrhage, suicides and murder.
Experts maintain that our workers work and live in unhealthy work environments. The massive amounts of cash expended by an average worker requires him to work inordinately long hours, sometimes up to 18 hours per day, which invariably causes health problems. The fact that many workers are crammed into small living spaces which are hardly conducive to healthy living and the years apart from loved ones at home all combine to take a heavy toll on their health.
What causes us consternation is that hardly any constructive steps have been  undertaken to address the problems our expatriate workers face in host countries, particularly the Middle East come to face. Now why is that? We sing praises to the hard labour our citizens put in foreign lands to send foreign exchange to the rural economy. Yet, our missions abroad are less than well equipped with labour welfare officials to deal with their problems. It is high time the concerned ministry did something about this sorry state of affairs.