It is incredibly concerning that the abuse of Bangladeshi migrant workers is still an ongoing phenomenon that the administration has been unable to avert. This has resulted in 18,166 bodies of deceased migrant workers arriving into Bangladesh between the years 2018 and 2022, according to data from the Ministry of Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment.
By this point, our migrant workers facing abuse and trauma at the hands of their employers, particularly in the Gulf region, has become so commonplace that it has been almost accepted as an inevitability. But the fact remains that our government has to hold destination countries accountable for such gross violations of both worker and human rights.
According to the ministry’s data, more than 20% of the deceased had perished in the workplace due to accidents, while the majority had passed away due to alleged natural causes. There is very little reason to believe such high numbers of deaths are a happenstance.
The brutal working conditions in Gulf nations, with first-hand accounts of abuse and outright torture experienced by migrant workers at the hands of their employers, is not a big secret. To add insult to injury, workers who have survived but sustained life-altering injuries in the workplace are rarely, if ever, compensated.
The Bangladeshi government needs to send a clear message to destination countries rife with worker abuse: Treat our people with the dignity and rights that they deserve or build your high rise structures yourselves. There is absolutely no reason why our hard working men and women have to suffer injury and death for the opportunity to work abroad.
Given the established industriousness of our expatriate workers, solidifying newer employment destinations, such as South Korea -- a country that has already expressed a great deal of interest in our manpower -- needs to be higher up on the government’s agenda.
It is high time that the nation got behind our hard-working remittance workers.
