workers
Bangladesh owes a lot to its dedicated and hardworking expatriate workforce all over the world, as their hard work has kept our economy afloat for decades and continues to do so. Which is why the inadequacy of our embassies and other foreign missions in providing Bangladeshis overseas with the help they require has been a point of embarrassment for so long.
However, according to government officials, specifically the Foreign Affairs Adviser to the interim government, any efforts to help distressed expat Bangladeshi workers must begin in their home country.
According to the adviser, around 80% of such issues originate before migrant workers even leave the country, while only the remaining 20% of issues arise at their host countries. A big reason behind Bangladeshi foreign missions being unable to provide expat workers with appropriate assistance is a gross lack of capacity -- Saudi Arabia, for example, hosts close to 3,200,000 Bangladeshi workers, with only 50 officials working as missions there.
While it is certainly worth knowing that most of the problems faced by our overseas workers can be mitigated at home, it certainly does not excuse the paltry number of missions at destinations as popular to our overseas workers as Saudi Arabia. It behooves the current administration to bolster the numbers with additional personnel, and if there are any regulatory issues which could prevent this, the administration needs to work with the host government in order to find a workable solution.
According to a recent Daily Star report, there has been a steady rise in deaths of migrant workers since the year 2020, suggesting that, going by government data, that most migrant deaths occur due to stroke or brain hemorrhage, while other causes include heart disease, work-related accidents, road crashes, suicide, and homicide. These are not issues that our foreign missions, or indeed the administration, can overlook.
The record number of remittance being sent by our hard-working men and women abroad mean very little if their lives are not valued. Bangladesh needs to do a lot better for its overseas workers, and the onus lies on both our foreign missions, who must be bolstered in numbers, and host governments to cooperate to that end.
