Keeping Kuwait clean with Bangladeshi money
Not only in Kuwait do our workers have to pay their employers -- instead of getting paid -- for their labour. This is a stark reality, and it is so in many of the countries of the Middle East which employ Bangladeshi workers. This have been known to everybody, except the unsuspecting migrant workers seeking greener pastures in distant lands -- only to find themselves cheated -- by the combined contrivance of the manpower agents in Bangladesh and the employers in the receiving countries.
Only recently has the plight of our workers in this country got extensive media coverage. But one wonders whether there has been enough commotion for people at the right places to get motivated enough to address their problems in earnest. It is a comforting fact that the Foreign Affairs adviser is in Kuwait, welcomed to that country almost two months after the first batch of Bangladeshi workers returned home, battered and bruised at the hands of Kuwait policemen, for demanding their rightful due. They were not even accorded the minimum human dignity to collect their personal belongings before being repatriated.
It could be said that the travails of our workers in Kuwait are fairly representative of the troubles that our workers face in some of the other Middle East countries.
The day they land in the receiving country they sign, what has come to be known as, the "slavery bond." They are taken to an accommodation whose condition is little better than a pigsty, kept in the most inhuman conditions, barricaded like animals, and, after having had all their papers taken away by the employer, made to sign on the dotted lines of documents whose substance none of them understands. They become no better than a bonded labourer.
Most of the domestic workers and cleaners in Kuwait are Bangladeshis and that is why there is good deal of truth in the comment that in one sense Kuwait is being kept clean with Bangladeshi money.
It is unimaginable that for all these years we have been exporting manpower to a country where there was no fixed rate of pay for the category of workers that we were sending. There was no minimum wage law except for domestic workers, which was KD 48, and even in those cases it was not possible for anyone to ensure or verify whether the domestic workers were being paid as required by law. For all the other categories of workers so many different charges, which the employers are supposed to pay to the state from their pocket, were deducted from whatever was due to them as "pay" that very little was left for the workers to send home. The employers are supposed to deposit pay of the workers in the bank. While that is being done, most of the employers take away the bank card forcefully from the Bangladeshi workers.
One wonders whether the concerned officials are aware of the situation. And one wonders whether the government of Kuwait has done enough to prevent our workers being victimised? While one agrees that our workers should always respect the law of the countries they are working in, is it not for the receiving countries to ensure that the foreign workers are not cheated?
There are about 12,000 female workers in Kuwait, of whom about 4,500 work in the private sector (mostly in schools), and the less said about their plight the better. Employment of female workers as domestic help has been stopped for now. In fact it should never be allowed, for in many of these countries these women are treated worse than in the days of Jahiliat.
And as for those women that are employed in schools, all the schools in Kuwait remain closed for three months of the year, and during this period they are not paid anything. What are the avenues open to a woman left to fend for herself for three months of the year? And we accepted these conditions of service without comprehending the consequences of such an occupation. Was there nobody to see the hell that these unfortunate women were being pushed into for the sake of a few dollars?
It is also a fact that some of our workers in these countries have resorted to illegal ways of income. Trading in false passports is one such activity, and there are several such occupation that they take up to supplement their income particularly after having become "illegal," and making foreign workers illegal is another "trade" of some of the employers.
It's time to lodge a coordinated thrust against exploitation of our workers abroad. There are several parties to this. It starts with the manpower agents at home (perhaps human traffickers is a more appropriate adjective), who indulge in the most unethical competition of sending workers abroad at the cheapest rate, and the employers at the receiving end that cheat these workers by exploiting their ignorance, the existing rule or the absence of one, and the utter inability of the concerned ministries in Bangladesh to address the plight of the expatriate workers. There is perhaps nexus between recruiting agents and some government agencies too, since in one case almost three and half times more workers were sent to one Middle East country than the number of visas attested by our embassy there.
Considering that our workers abroad contribute more money to our foreign exchange coffers than any one single sector of the economy it pains to see the raw deal that they are getting. About the time when our workers were getting bashed up in Kuwait and not a word of protest from our side except for a muted whimper, it was quite a contrast to see the government honouring some expatriate Bangladeshis as CIPs for having invested over one million dollars each in the US Dollar Premium Bond and US Dollar Investment Bond introduced by the government.
While the contribution of these gentlemen cannot be slighted and they certainly deserve the status of a CIP, the ostentation that accompanied the conferring ceremony at the Osmany Auditorium appeared extremely incongruous given that many of those on whose contribution of more than eight billion dollars to our foreign exchange keep us going, were facing the most horrendous experience in a foreign country at that time.
We seem to have got our priorities wrong, for to me these poor workers that break their backs, and suffer the worst form of indignity to provide for my comfort at home and the foreign exchange to travel abroad, from whom we turn our face away in the most supercilious manner when approached at the airport by one of them to fill in their disembarkation card for them, are the ones who merit being at the top of the list of CIPs. And it is to their wellbeing that the government must attend with the greatest of sincerity and utmost urgency.
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