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Workers end up in thick soup in Libya

Manpower touts push job prospects of Bangladeshis into peril; govt yet to act

Porimol Palma
Crooked Libyan labour suppliers in connivance with Bangladeshi manpower mafias are trading on unskilled Bangladeshi workers and those who are hired on tourist visas under dubious arrangements turning Bangladesh's prospective labour market in jeopardy.
Around five to six thousand
Bangladeshi workers are confined to the underground rooms in various parts of Libya, said a few Bangladeshis who have returned home from Libya recently.
Even the brokers take away their passports as soon as they arrive there and the workers are forced to pay them the money they demand in the name of providing jobs.
Bangladesh's labour counsellor in
Libya Akber Hossain acknowledged the fact but he could not say for sure how many such workers are there in trouble.
Experts said if this situation continues, Libya wo uld be "another Malaysia" where manpower brokers used to put thousands of workers in confinement, which eventually led to the halt of labour migration.
The government, however, has not
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taken any effective steps to discipline the labour recruitment in the oil-rich African nation, which has taken up over $100 billion development projects and requires around 10 lakh foreign workers in the next five years.
Until October this year. Libya has hired around 16,000 workers.
Talking to The Daily Star over phone, Akber Hossain said the workers who are in trouble fall into three categories. Those who went there with due work visas are facing troubles, as they are not efficient enough to work in construction sector, the main sector where most of the Bangladeshi workers are employed.
"When the employers find workers unfit to work in a job, brokers keep them in rooms in the far-Hung areas isolated from localities,” he said.
Ln such cases, labour suppliers should inform the embassy but instead they resort to illegal means and try to come into contract with other companies.
“These suppliers make some quick bucks at the cost of bodi the workers and employers. The workers are either low-paid or they remain unemployed." Akber said, adding: "It is basically the Bangladeshi manpower brokers who joined hands with Libyan labour suppliers and started the malpractice."
Secondly those who are hired on short tourist visas face the problem. Libya requires invitation from any Libyan company to issue tourist visas to Bangladeshis. But labour suppliers are sending false invitations to the jobseekers from the name-only companies, he said.
Thirdly human traffickers promise workers jobs in Europe but finally dump them in Libya via Sudan or Egypt, Akbar said.
Mosaddek from Sylhet is one of such victims. He went to
Libya six months back through an agency in Malibagh that assured him of a job as a hospital cleaner but after arriving in Tripoli, he was left unemployed.
"As I arrived at the Tripoli Airport, a Libyan received me and handed me over to a Bangladeshi named Waziullah in an underground room in the desert. He said he would give me job and took away my passport. One week passed this way and as I wanted my passport back he said I would have to give him $500,” said Mosaddek after returning from Libya recently.
He then asked his family and friends in Bangladesh to send money. Only after payment of tire money demanded, Waziullah gave him the passport.
"Then I came out of the underground room and contacted people I knew. I wandered from streets to streets asking for a job, but to no avail," he lamented.
Asked what would happen to these workers, Akber Hossain said," Now we are not allowing wholesale hiring of workers. If any company wants, say 100 workers, we allow 25 or 50. If they work well we approve the rest."
A high level delegation should talk to the Libyan authorities to address the problems, he said.
Expatriates' Welfare Secretary Elias Ahmed, however, said a team led by the minister would go to Libya soon to look into the issues and talk to Libyan authorities.
Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (Baira) President Ghulam Mustafa said the government should immediately check the malpractices.
Bangladesh mission should authenticate each job order before attestation. "I would also ask recruiting agencies to check skills of workers before they are sent to Libya,” Mustafa added.