Bangladesh missions lack migrant labour experts

Prof Tasnim Siddiqui speaks at a press conference at Jatiya Press Club in the city yesterday. On her right are Prothom Alo Editor Matiur Rahman and Motasim Billah and on her left is Merina Sultana. Photo: STAR

Migrant workers fell victim to injustice, repression, and other anomalies abroad due to lack of expert labour attachés in the Bangladesh missions and lack of coordinated efforts from the ministries concerned, Prof Tasnim Siddiqui of Dhaka University said yesterday.
Appointed from army and audit, accounts, and administration cadres, the labour attaches had no practical knowledge on how to handle migrant labour issues abroad, leaving migrant workers to face one-sided trail in the countries concerned, she said.
Prof Tasnim, who is also the chair of Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU), urged the government to compel recruiting agencies to introduce identity cards for their brokers as a step to check deceiving of workers intended to go abroad.
She made the comments while presenting a keynote paper on RMMRU's annual report at a press conference titled “Pattern and Trends of Labour Migration 2011: Achievement and Challenge” at Jatiya Press Club. Manusher Jonno Foundation, a development organisation, gave assistance to the programme.
Amid global recession, manpower export rates fell by 17.86 percent in 2009 and 21 percent in 2010 compared to the previous years, but this year it rose by 40.81 percent, she said from a report of Bureau of Manpower, Employment, and Training (BMET).
Urging the government to enact the draft “Expatriate and Overseas Employment” law soon, she demanded building of an online database for returnees so that their experiences can be used in building the nation.
She also said the government should follow multilateral approaches instead of government-to-government approach in dealing with migration related problems like visa trading, reducing migration cost, Kafala system, and raising opinion against death sentence.
In the report, it was also demanded that the decade "2012-2021" be declared as Migration Decade to give importance to the sector.
Matiur Rahman, editor of the Prothom Alo, said migrant workers earned remittances equal to 13.5 percent of the country's GDP, which was a great contribution on their part.
“For them we have many things to do. Let's take a fresh initiative and speak of them. We are people of newspaper and we can do more”, he said.
At the programme, Matiur Rahman awarded two local journalists for their outstanding reporting on migration.