According to an email sent by one expatriate engineer, a total of 180 Bangladeshi migrant workers are passing their days in inhuman conditions at a construction site in Najaf, Iraq.
Engineer Mohammad Siddique, on-behalf of 180 workers, sent the email to Rights Jessore, a local human rights organisation dealing with migrants’ issues, on Wednesday.
Binoy Krishna Mallick, executive director of Rights Jessore, informed the Dhaka Tribune about this matter over the phone yesterday.
Referring to the email, he said the Bangladeshi workers had been passing their days without sufficient food or water. Moreover, their employer had not paid them their salaries for the last three months.
Every time the workers tried to escape, the company staff would threaten them at gunpoint.
Mallick said: “We received an email last month as well. We informed the matter to the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment and the Foreign Ministry but there was no response.”
Three months ago, the workers, including two engineers, went to Najaf, a city in Iraq, roughly 100 miles south of Baghdad, through Career Overseas Consultant, a Dhaka-based recruiting agency, by paying Tk3-5 lakh.
They were employed by a company named Halim Turkey and were working for a project called “Abuturab” on Alasraf Road 8, Najaf, Iraq.
Binoy Krishna Mallick said the workers were not getting any help from the Bangladeshi embassy in Iraq either.
