As the name suggests, the expatriates’ welfare desk at the Shahjalal International Airport in the capital is supposed to be dedicated to looking after the needs of Bangladeshis going or coming from abroad.
However, inbound and outgoing Bangladeshis, especially migrant workers, have said that the officers assigned with the desk keep busy serving the ministers and high officials of the government and their relatives, instead of doing their actual job.
“Providing services to the ministers, secretaries and joint secretaries is part of our duty. But unfortunately, we also have to serve their relatives,” said a senior officer of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), seeking anonymity.
As the names suggest, neither the ministers nor the secretaries nor their relatives are expatriate Bangladeshis. The relatives are supposed to get necessary services from the desk only if they are Bangladeshi nationals who are permanently living abroad.
“Please call me later. I am busy preparing to receive the expatriates’ welfare minister who is due to land in a few minutes,” Jahidul Islam, assistant director of BMET and in charge of the welfare desk, told this correspondent over phone at around 5:45pm Thursday.
When asked why he was busy receiving the minister instead of serving the migrant workers, his reply was: “I am a very little man [I have very little power]. The secretary and other officials have already arrived [at the airport] to receive the minister.”
A senior BMET official informed that the welfare desk had received letters from the expatriates’ welfare ministry that directed the desk to serve the minister and all government officials above the post of joint secretary at the airport.
The services include receiving them when they arrive at the airport from abroad and seeing them off before they take off on a foreign tour, he said.
He also expressed the frustration that looking after the relatives not only barred them from doing their actual job (that is, to serve the migrant Bangladeshi workers) but was also immensely painful.
He added that the job becomes particularly painful provided that the ministers, secretaries and the director general of BMET all have their very own dedicated protocol officers.
“The officers and staffs of the welfare desk at the airport can provide protocol. There is no harm in it because they also deliver services to the migrant workers,” BMET Director General Begum Shamsun Nahar told the Dhaka Tribune.
Many migrant workers, both outbound and returnees, alleged that they were not treated well by the officers and staff of welfare desk.
Although the officers and staff get their salaries from the fund created using money donated by migrant workers, they treat them badly and deprive them of the services they need, migrant workers say.
The expatriates’ welfare desk at the airport consists of a director level officer and 21 staffs of the BMET to deliver services to the migrant workers.