‘Homecoming’ two years after death

Dreaming of a better future, Shipon Hawlader of Barishal's Gournadi borrowed Tk 4 lakh from different NGOs and persons with high interest and went to Brunei in 2020.

But a year into going there, Shipon, an undocumented worker, suffered a heart attack in January 2021 and was admitted to a local government hospital. Following a year-long treatment, he died there on January 31, 2022, said his family.

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Since his death, Shipon's body has been kept at the hospital's mortuary as his employer did not pay the hospital bill equivalent to Tk 15 lakh. His poor family also could not arrange the hospital bill and airfare required to bring the body home.

A diplomatic and government effort started after Abu Ahmed Faijul Kabir, senior coordinator of Ain o Salish Kendra, a rights body, sent an application to the Bangladesh high commissioner in Brunei in January 2023, seeking her help to bring back the body.

With formal and informal efforts by Bangladesh High Commissioner Nahida Rahman Shumona, the RIPAS Hospital authority waved Shipon's hospital bill recently.

The body was finally sent to Dhaka on a flight and it reached the airport on Wednesday night, said Md Abu Bakkar Siddique, first secretary (labour) at the Embassy.

He said the embassy arranged the airfare of around Tk 4.5 lakh.

He said they wrote Shipon's employer Majedy Bin Haji Abdul Gani to pay the hospital bill but he did not pay heed. "I have lodged a complaint against the employer with the Labour Department of Brunei," he told The Daily Star over the phone yesterday.

Shipon's wife, Khorsheda Begum, said after she heard that her husband was admitted to a hospital, she borrowed another Tk 1.65 lakh from neighbours and relatives for her his treatment.

"Now my daughter and I have been passing days in financial hardship. But despite all the pain, I am finally at peace to see my husband's body return home around two and a half years after his demise in a foreign land," Khorsheda told this newspaper.

Shipon's only daughter, Sabrina Mim, said she passed HSC in 2020 but had to stop her education due to financial hardship.