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Bring 14 stranded migrant workers back from Iraq

Demand family members, former co-workers

Staff Correspondent
Former co-workers and family members yesterday demanded immediate rescue of the 14 Bangladeshi migrants who have been confined to an Iraqi labour accommodation facility for the last 10 months without jobs and adequate food.
They also urged the government to arrange appropriate compensation and cancel the registration of the recruiting agencies that sent the construction workers to Iraq in February and March this year for a monthly salary of $350.
The demands came at a press conference organised by Anirban Survivors' Voice, a platform of returnees, with Shikkha Shasthya Unnayan Karzakram (Shishuk) at the capital's Jatiya Press Club.
"The condition of 14 of our fellow brothers in the Iraqi camp is terrible. We want the government to rescue them immediately to save their lives," said Zakir Hossain, one of the 11 migrants who returned home from the same Iraqi labour facility on November 30. He said their employer, one Haider, had promised repatriation of the fourteen by December 10, while the government had failed to compel the recruiting agencies to bring the victims back.
The 27 workers went to Iraq through four Bangladeshi recruiting agencies--Morning Sun Enterprise, Meghna Trade International, East Bengal Overseas and Idea International-spending Tk 3-4 lakh each. Bangladesh Migrants Foundation (BMF), a migrants' rights body, was also involved in the migration process of some of these workers.
Their Iraqi employer, M Kodia Co General Trading, however, failed to start its construction project and threw them in the facility in Najaf, 160 kilometres off the capital, Baghdad.
The Bangladesh embassy in Baghdad could not help arrange alternative jobs for them. Finally, 11 were provided tickets to return home, but the remaining 14 (two of them fled the facility) are fighting cold and starvation.
Meanwhile, Javed Ahmed, additional director general (employment), Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), told The Daily Star that they had
instructed the recruiting agencies to bring the 14 migrants back.
He, however, said he was not sure about any deadline though he told this correspondent on November 24 that he would try either to repatriate them or arrange jobs in seven days.
Asked why the BMET is not taking actions against the agencies, he said if they did not comply with the instructions, their security money would be confiscated.
Anirban Survivors' Voice leader Isahak Farazi, Shishuk Programme Manager Zillur Rahman and Programme Officer Al Amin Noyon were present at the event.