Plights of labour migrants

Exploitation can be reduced through stream lining recruitment

Tasneem Siddiqui
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Migration of labour has been a significant factor in growth and development of many countries. None the less labour migration has become an extremely exploitative and complex phenomenon. International regimes involved in managing voluntary labour migration now highlights the need for development of national and regional policies along with international instruments to make migration mutually beneficial experience for all parties involved, the receiving and sending countries; and those who migrate.

Bangladesh is a huge human resource surplus country, hence it belongs to the supply side of global labour market. Since the mid 1970s, more than 3 million people have gone abroad to take up employment. It is estimated that at any given time, over the last ten years, at least 1 million Bangladeshis are employed abroad. Migration has also contributed to employment creation within Bangladesh. Private recruiting agencies, their agents and sub-agents, travel agencies, medical centers, inter state transportation owners and workers, all earn their livelihood by processing migration.

Last year, Bangladesh received around three billion US dollars as remittance. This is more than what it received as foreign aid. The steady flow of remittances has resolved the foreign exchange constraints, improved the balance of payments, and helped increase the supply of national savings. Remittances also constituted a very important source of the country's development budget. Currently, garments manufacturing is treated as the highest foreign exchange earning sector of Bangladesh. However, if the cost of import of raw material is adjusted, then the net earning from migrant workers' remittances is higher than that of the garments sector. In fact, since 1980s contrary to the popular belief, remittances sent by the migrant workers played a much greater role in sustaining the economy of Bangladesh than the garments sector.

Successive governments realised the importance of this sector and took various steps to manage migration. In 1976, the Bureau of manpower, employment and training has been created. In 1982, The Emigration Ordinance was promulgated. In 2001 a separate ministry named Ministry of Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment has been created. In 2002 Rules have been framed under the 1982 Ordinance. Still it has been difficult to effectively manage migration. Management Challenges are faced at all the stages, pre-departure, during or after return. In the following I will highlight some of the problems that are faced by the government and potential migrants while processing migration and offer some suggestions for resolving those.

Bangladesh mostly participates in the low-skilled and unskilled labour market. In recent years it is facing tough competition from the newly emerging labour sending countries like Nepal, Cambodia and Indonesia. Such competition among the labour sending countries is resulting in continuous lowering of terms and conditions of work. Besides, unemployment rates have increased in some of the labour receiving countries of Middle East. This led some of the countries to formulate policy for indigenisation of the labour force. To discourage dependence on overseas labour, few others have introduced a levy to be paid by the employer when they recruit foreign workers. These governments however did not raise the wage rate for encouraging the locals to take up the unskilled jobs. Therefore, locals do not find it attractive and the need for importing in certain types of work.

The employers have conveniently shifted the charge to the recruiting agencies of the sending countries. Now not only the recruiting agencies of the sending countries do not receive any commission for supplying labour, they have to purchase the visa from the employers by paying fee that the employers are required to pay to the government.

Buying and selling of visa itself has become a business for a group of people. A nexus of interest has developed among high level state functionaries of receiving countries, their recruiting agents, a group of expatriate Bangladeshis and a section of Bangladeshi recruiting agents. It has become extremely difficult to secure visa through what were previously taken to be regular channels. Now this nexus is involved in visa transaction through irregular practices. The visas are then put into auction to other agents who have less access to visas. It has become extremely difficult to take actions against this group of people who are often highly placed socially and politically.

Recruiting agencies that purchase visas, on their turn keep their margin and sell them to individual migrants. Almost all recruiting agencies are based in the capital city, Dhaka. It is not financially viable for them to have offices all over the country. In this situation they recruit through a host of agents and sub-agents. These informal agents perform two most important functions, i.e., recruitment of workers and financial transactions. The sole operation of recruitment at the grass-roots is conducted verbally, even payments are made without receipt. The dalal system has not been institutionalised. They are not formally registered with the recruiting agents they serve and do not possess any formal identification documents. This has created a situation where both recruiting agents or their sub-agents can commit fraud and evade responsibility. In this process a good number of those who wish to migrate are cheated and lose much of their assets while processing migration.

A large number of the migrants fall into low literacy category. In many cases they rely on the recruiting agents for issuance of their passports. The recruiting agents usually process a large number of passports at any given time. In some instances migrants do not even sign the passport application form. The employees of recruiting agents sign the forms on their behalf. Often the migrants find themselves into trouble in the receiving country, when their signatures do not match with the signatures in the passports. Some of the recruiting agents or the subagents commits fraud in the procuring the passports. There are occasions when a visa is sold to a worker other than the one to whom it was issued. The person or his/her father's name does not match with the one in the passport. For all practical purpose the migrant becomes an undocumented worker.

Lack of access to information prior to migration put migrants into vulnerable situations. When a person is not aware of his or her rights, it becomes almost impossible for them to assert these rights. When they process migration, they do not have access to names of licensed recruiting agents neither do they realize the importance of keeping papers. Before embarking on short-term contract migration, it is of immense importance that a migrant worker has at his or her disposal specific information about the destination countries, and his/her rights and duties under the legal regime of the receiving countries, cultural sensitivities and physical environment of the receiving countries. The migrant worker is either oblivious to these issues or all information he or she possesses on these issues are derived from verbal interaction with the dalals.

There are some important International instruments in respect to migration. These are, the Migration to Employment Convention (Revised) 1949 (No. 97) and the Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions) Convention, 1975 (No. 143) and the Migrant Workers Recommendations (No. 151) of ILO. Convention No. 97 came into force in 1952 and Convention No. 143 in the year 1978. The 1990 UN International Convention on the Protection of Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families (ICMW) is the most comprehensive instruments concerning the migrant workers. It ensures rights to both regular and irregular, male and female migrants. It is important to note that none of the labour receiving countries of Bangladesh has ratified the ILO Conventions or the UN Convention on migration. Bangladesh also did not ratify the ILO Conventions. It has signed the UN convention but did not ratify it yet. As a sending it is in Bangladesh's interest to accede to the Convention immediately and frame necessary enabling national legislation.

In the absence of ratification of international instruments by the receiving countries and Bangladesh, bilateral agreements or memorandum of understanding are important instruments through which some of the above mentioned problems can be resolved. Experiences in this regard show that there is a general reticence of the labour receiving countries to sign any bilateral agreement and memorandum of understanding that have legal bindings.

The 1982 Ordinance is an important legislation. However, since the 1980s the global labour migration process has experienced major changes. The Ordinance has become less effective in protecting the rights of migrant workers in the current political and economic global milieu. The Ordinance needs to be replaced by a rights based legislation reflecting the 1990 UN convention and other relevant ILO conventions. The government should ratify the UN and ILO conventions on migrant workers immidietly.

High ranking delegations may visit countries such as Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, UAE and Kuwait and draw the attention of authorities to the negative consequences of work visa manipulation on both parties and urge them to take necessary steps. Necessary legal and administrative actions against identified Bangladeshi procurers and middlemen engaged in visa trade in the Middle East should be taken urgently.

In order to reduce fraudulent practices experienced by the migrants before departure, recruiting agencies should register their intermediaries. The dalals should have their geographical area of operation specified. Photo identification will be issued to them and their names aught to be displayed in local level government offices, i.e. thana or union parisad. All transactions should be made through banks and the dalals/agencies will be required to issue receipts for any transactions made. Working without registration will be treated as a penal offence.

Labour migration plays a vital and indispensable role to the economy of Bangladesh. It is true that some of the problems faced by the labour migrants are beyond the jurisdiction of the Bangladesh state. Nun the less, some of the hardships are caused by actors within the state. The government can take different policy and actions in making them accountable and protect the migrants.
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The author Professor, Department of Political Science,University Of Dhaka