NILIMA JAHAN

Abandoned by her husband, Rahima (not her real name), a mother of two, considered a broker’s offer of a job in Saudi Arabia as a lifeline.

In 2020, she left Narsingdi for Saudi Arabia on the promise of an “office job” with a monthly salary of 1,400 riyals (around Tk 46,000).

However, following her arrival at a recruitment agency guesthouse in Riyadh, she was not taken to any office. Instead, she was moved to a sprawling mansion where she was made to do hard labour for 1,100 riyals (around Tk 36,000) per month.

“I worked until 1:00am every day. Whenever I sat down to rest for a while, the madam at the mansion would holler at me,” said Rahima, now in her early 40s.

Her employer would give her very little food, often leaving her to scavenge leftovers.

“One day, I couldn’t bear the hunger. I went out and brought some food from outside. When they found out, they beat me mercilessly and locked me up for a week. I was hardly given any food.”

A few days later, she fell off a high stool while cleaning curtains. She suffered leg injuries and her lip was cut. Her employer gave her only painkillers and forced her to keep working.

As her condition worsened, she begged her employer to let her return home. Her employer then arranged a phone call with the recruitment agent who told her: “We bought you. If you want to leave, you must pay 1,500 riyals.”

She had to work with a limp for months because she couldn’t pay.

Physically and mentally broken, Rahima finally managed to contact the Bangladesh embassy after a couple of years, only to be sent back home without her last two months’ wages.

“The embassy staff kept me in their safe home for three days and told me to leave Riyadh since my employer had paid for an air ticket,” said Rahima who returned home in 2023.

Rahima’s ordeal highlights a broader pattern of abuse. While the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) does not have specific data on women migrant workers who faced abuses abroad, the BRAC Migration Programme reports that at least 69,090 women have returned home since 2019. Many of them experienced physical, psychological or sexual abuse, food deprivation, unpaid wages, and excessively long working hours.

BMET records show that over 12.5 lakh Bangladeshi women migrated for work, primarily to Saudi Arabia (5.8 lakh), Jordan (2.09 lakh), the UAE (1.32 lakh), Lebanon (1.08 lakh) and Oman (1.24 lakh) between 2004 and 2025.

According to the Wage Earners’ Welfare Board (WEWB), the bodies of 799 female migrant workers were returned to Bangladesh over the past eight years. Most of their death certificates listed suicide as the cause, with the majority of cases reported from Saudi Arabia, followed by Jordan and Lebanon.

Official data show that women migrant workers filed 2,036 complaints with BMET between 2021 and 2025. Though 1,969 of those were “resolved”, the recruiting agencies accused of malpractice were not punished in