Stop harassment of migrants during medicals

On top of the many obstacles that aspiring migrant workers already have to deal with, another alarming one has now come to our attention. To enter any of the Gulf countries – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE – any Bangladeshi willing to get a work or residency visa needs a health clearance from one of the 133 medical centres listed by the Gulf Health Council (GHC) in the country. According to a report by this newspaper, many of these centres are exploiting potential migrants, giving them fake negative medical reports (unless migrants are willing to pay bribes) and thereby ruining their chances of going abroad for work.

For example, Nesar Mia, one such individual who was supposed to go to Qatar, was told he had tuberculosis at the Stemz Health Care BD Pvt Ltd in Dhaka. Sceptical of the test result, he submitted his samples to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, where he tested negative for the disease. When he contacted Stemz, the centre's officials proposed that he could be shown as TB negative if he paid them Tk 1 lakh, on top of the Tk 8,500 fee he had paid for his medical examination. He refused, so they uploaded the fake result online, making it impossible for him to go to Qatar.

An investigation by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) found that many aspiring migrants have been victims of similar irregularities at the hands of some of these centres, including being blackmailed and charged additional money in the name of different fees. Most migrants, however, refrain from lodging complaints, fearing further hassles. Alarmingly, in two cases that were reported, the DGHS completed its duty just by issuing suspension orders and show-cause notices, only to withdraw the suspension orders a few days later.

As per an estimate, the Ministry of Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment has received at least nine such allegations in the last year. A deputy secretary at the monitoring and enforcement wing at the ministry, however, somewhat contradicted it by saying they have not received such allegations in the last six months, even though they do not have any official channel dedicated to receiving such complaints. This is a perfect example of how different government ministries are trying to escape responsibility for the sufferings of migrant workers. Why wouldn't the expatriate ministry have such a mechanism that can ensure the welfare of our migrants? Why can't the DGHS – with whom these private medical centres are required to be licenced – take any effective measures to stop the abuse?

There is no reason for our migrants to suffer like this. The concerned ministries need to cooperate with each other and save migrant workers from all the hassles. They should also immediately start discussing the matter with the GHC so that an initiative can be taken about bringing all the health check-up centres under the ministry's supervision and to avoid extortion and fraud, and also to quickly bring the GHC-authorised health centres under the ministry's recently published guidelines for migrant health check-up.