Bangladeshi workers left in limbo in Afghanistan

Twenty-Five Bangladeshis were lured with offers of fat salaries by an Indian national who had worked for 6 years in different re-rolling mills in Bangladesh. He had befriended some of those now stranded in Afghanistan and forced to stay within the confines of a factory , where they are living under inhuman conditions. The story of these men is pretty much the same as those of other Bangladeshi migrants who get trapped into near-slavery conditions when they are trafficked to foreign countries. It is not as if our countrymen have never been trafficked before. Indeed, it has been going on for years and still they continue to fall prey for offers that are very enticing but in reality too good to be true.

It is imperative at this stage for the Bangladeshi mission in Afghanistan to be instructed by the ministry of foreign affairs to expedite their return. Our nationals have suffered enough, both in terms of being cheated out of money and spending seven months in servitude.

Obviously, it is time that more proactive measures are taken by authorities to crack down on these illegal syndicates that promise the sun and the moon to unsuspecting people and send them packing to foreign jobs that are hardly rosy. This needs to be coupled with public awareness campaigns that go beyond simple announcements and advertisements and the information needs to be disseminated at grassroots level because more often than not, it is simple rural folk who fall for these ploys.