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BITTER TRUTH

Break the racket in manpower export
LURED by the promise of job offers, big money and better future thousands of Bangladeshis have fallen victim to unscrupulous brokers and fake manpower agents. Many of these migrant workers have perished while crossing the rough seas and horrid desert lands while others have seen their
dreams shattered by the cruel hand of fate.
A report was published in a leading English daily on September 22 about the repatriation of 20 Bangladeshis who were lured to Tanzania for jobs in South Africa and abandoned at the Tanzanian border after their passports were snatched from them. They were arrested by the Tanzanian police and left to languish in jail for 11 months. This is a pathetic example of the vile modus operand! of some dishonest manpower agents in Bangladesh. Alongside the hardship of the workers, their pathetic state of living and deprivation of many aspirants have also come to public attention.
The ordeal of Jamal Hossain, who was stranded at the Tanzanian border because of the machinations and deceitful activities of a fake manpower agent who took Tk..6 lakh taka from him, is more than pathetic. In the past years, many people seeking jobs in Malaysia were cheated in the same manner, as evidenced by the fact that about 2 lakh 67 thousand workers were sent there illegally. One Liton of Ashulia and his cousin Hamid had to sell their ancestral land, their last resource, to pay Tk. 2 lakh each for a job in Malaysia. The payment only ensured their passage to Malaysia. As soon as they reached Kuala Lumpur, their ordeal began.
For the past one decade, some district towns and even remote villages have become busy recruiting centres for people seeking their fortune abroad. Every month hundreds of young men like Jamal Hossain,
Hamid and Liton — all of them unemployed and mostly from low income families — take foreign routes with dreams of finding better jobs and making big money. While some strike it rich, many end up in hellholes, only to get deported to their home country as paupers. And yet many others meet an even crueller fate, like the 11 Bangladeshis without valid travel documents who perished in the boat tragedy in 2005 off the coat of Morocco.
It is also the get-rich quick dream which fuels the vast network of manpower recruiting agents and brokers, many of them fake but emboldened to run this
trafficking business because they reportedly enjoy the patronage of some law enforcers, passport and immigration personnel and airport staff, as pointed out by the members of the task force that visited Malaysia after a series of reports relating to harassment of Bangladeshi workers. The dirty game played by the fake man-
power agents made the lives of the job seekers miserable after they landed in Malaysia. Some of them, in a bid to avoid arrest, spent months in the forested areas.
The investigation by the task force at that time identified 18 recruiting agents who were involved in this corruption racket in collusion with some members of Bangladesh Migrant Workers Association in Malaysia. The smuggling of illegal migrants is a thriving few hundred crore taka a year business. On an average, a few thousand youths are illegally sent to different countries every month through a well-knit network of shady recruiting agents who have links with local touts and
international syndicates.
Remittances sent by migrant workers account for a major chunk of the foreign currency reserves, boosting the economy and contributing to the development of the country. Yet the travails of the migrant workers are many, starting from the heavy burden of agency fees to fraud to poor working conditions to unfriendly environments that make their lives harder.
The big game of manpower export to Saudi Arabia, Middle East countries or Malaysia has been replete with instances of fraud, deceit and chicanery from the beginning. All the stories of harassment and hassle are
not known to people. Poor gullible people, mostly hailing from the countryside, trust these manpower agents and pay them the hefty fees they demand, believing all they say to be true. Sadly, once the payment is made the ordeal begins.
The heated debate and hectic lobbying initiated by Bangladesh Association of
International Recruiting Agencies (Baira), asking the government to hand over the Malaysian manpower export rights to them -- which the government acquired through the dynamic effort of the minister of expatriate welfare and employment -- has caused more concern than hope that sprang up the moment the aspirant younger population in the country learnt about the opening up of the door for jobs in Malaysia. Bangladesh can't allow this chance to slip by because of the demand raised by some unscrupulous members of the Baira. Baira can’t deny the incidents of fraud and deceit resorted to time and again by a host of brokers that
devastated many families in the country.
With such incidents coming to public attention in both the countries, Malaysia stopped recruiting workers from Bangladesh. The crisis created since 1996 continued until now when Malaysia agreed to recruit 5 lakh workers on government to government basis. With the 5 lakh workers who will join the 7 lakh workers already working there, Malaysia would be the second largest manpower market for Bangladesh after Saudi Arabia. It is true that the government can't remain in business for all time to come, but it can't deviate from the state arrangement and agreement signed between the two governments. It will set a guideline, a policy framework in respect of migration cost to be followed by Baira or other recruiting agencies in future.
With investment climate in the country shrinking fast, population increasing and job opportunities eroding, all sections of the populace believe that the economic future of the country at present is inextricably linked to the manpower that remains idle for years without any redeeming future. Baira's demand has aroused fear and uncertainty among the aspirant workers willing to avail the long sought for chance for job opportunities in Malaysia. More importantly, aspirant workers have every reason to be happy because workers will be selected on district quota basis this time and they can avail the chance of going abroad at a reasonable cost of Tk.40,000 per worker, at the highest. The government can't be pressured into accepting Baira's demand that aims at enriching a handful of the 1,200 recruiting agencies along with some fraudsters, to the utter disregard of the welfare, living and job opportunities of the vast masses now without jobs and languishing in poverty.
The writer is a columnist of The Daily Star.
E-mail: aukhandk@gamil.com