The government will send inspection teams to three countries to review working conditions for expatriate Bangladeshis and investigate allegations of harassment and broken job promises.
Two teams will fly to Jordan and Hong Kong, from where many housemaids returned home in recent months allegedly because of abuse, overwork, inadequate food and cultural barriers, officials said.
Another team will fly to the Maldives to check the “ground realities” in the island nation, from where many migrant workers have also recently returned after failing to land suitable jobs and having suffered difficulties in their respective workplaces, a senior official of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) said.
The teams will be comprised of senior officials from both BMET, and the Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry.
Some of the returnees alleged that additional fees were demanded of them by their recruiting agencies for arranging new jobs, after their Hong Kong employers had terminated their employments.
If such complaints were left unaddressed, officials said, these will have a negative effect on the entire Hong Kong-based manpower export sector.
So far, about 150 housemaids have gone to Hong Kong through two private recruiting agencies – SA Trading and Sadia International – after receiving two months of in-house training.
About 28,000 Bangladeshi workers have so far gone to the Maldives since 1976, of which around 8,000 went in the first nine months of the current year. BMET has recently temporarily stopped giving emigration clearance for Maldives-going workers in order to observe the conditions of those who had earlier left for the country.
A worker generally has to pay between Tk180,000 and 250,000 for going to the Maldives, depending on the rates of the agencies hiring them.
Jabed Ahmed, additional director general of BMET, said they had come to know of the problems recently.
“We sent a file to the ministry for official approval to send three teams in the three countries to inspect the working conditions there and probe the harassment allegations.”
Members of the teams will talk to the employers, recruiting agents, workers and housemaids, and try to find solutions to the problems being created, he added.
