Our embassies and other relevant authorities’ lack of any meaningful steps in protecting the rights of our hardworking men and women overseas has been well established for a while already. With little to no improvements in sight, it seems that those upon whose backs this very nation has been built and developed have been all but left to the dogs.
To that end, a recently published report on migrant deaths in the Gulf states -- the predominant destination for our remittance earners -- is further proof of just how much the administration has failed them.
According to Vital Signs Partnership’s report titled “The Deaths of Migrants in the Gulf,” as many as 10,000 migrant workers from South Asia and Southeast Asia die in Gulf nations every year, with over half of these deaths remaining unexplained. This further gives credence to Dhaka airport’s official findings which state that over 11,000 Bangladeshi migrants had died while working in the Gulf states between the year 2016 and September of last year.
This is, without hyperbole, a matter of great concern.
Stories of worker abuse in Gulf nations range from exploitation to torture, as numerous returning migrants corroborate the horrid conditions that they have to endure in making sure they can earn enough to send back home. That is given the fact that they even find steady employment in the first place.
Worker safety has long been a bone of contention for Bangladesh, whether local or overseas. But the failure to ensure worker safety for those who have a direct hand in shaping Bangladesh into the gainful nation it has become is especially tragic.
A big part of the problem is the very system through which workers find such opportunities, who often have to rely on unscrupulous middlemen whose very goal is to exploit these poor workers into signing up for an uncertain fate away from home. Needless to say, this very system needs to be investigated.
Our migrant workers don’t deserve this, in fact no one, regardless of what nation they are from, deserves the kind of treatment that migrant workers from the sub-continent and beyond are facing in Gulf nations. Our embassies need to get their priorities right and get the governments in these countries to play ball.
No amount of foreign remittance can be worth the human cost being incurred.
