It is nice to hear that female manpower export in Bangladesh rising up gradually. There has been a boost in sending the country's female migrant workers in abroad, which has more than doubled over the last five years.
In 2009 the government sent 22,224 female migrant workers to different countries while the number has stood at 48,463 in the first eight months of the current year. A total of 2,43,528 female workers have gone abroad since 2008, according to the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET).
Even 5 years ago the women of Bangladesh was not so interested to go abroad. The situation is totally different now. Despite some incidents of their harassment which were reported both in local and international media, female workers are now being encouraged to go abroad.
Marzina Akter, who hails from Chapainawabganj, has been working as a domestic help in Jordan for over two years now.
“After the death of my husband seven year ago, I started working first in my hometown and later in Dhaka. But I couldn't save up enough to run my family. That's why I have chosen to work abroad,” she told.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has emerged as the largest recruiter of Bangladeshi female workers. It alone has hired around 15,000 female workers till August this year.
Jordan and Mauritius are the second and third largest recruiters on the list. Oman, Lebanon and Qatar are also hiring large numbers of Bangladeshi females this year.
Employment opportunities in the Gulf attract as many as 3 million women from the developing countries of South Asia every year. The International Labor Organization (ILO), a U.N. agency dedicated to workers’ rights, estimates that Arab countries host more than 20 million migrant workers in all, one third of them women coming from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, the Philippines and Ethiopia. Typically, these women find jobs through labor recruiters in their home countries. Although some recruitment firms are legitimate, many others are not licensed and have been known to trick women with false promises. Quite often, once these women arrive in their host countries to work as housemaids, they discover that labor laws do not apply to them and that there is little help available if they feel exploited or violated in any way. The ILO estimates that 2.1 million people are engaged in domestic work across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and one in five women workers are domestic workers.
The women contributing a lot to increase our remittance, Though the statistics fail to give the actual figure of their contribution , it is the second biggest foreign currency earning sector. But what is the real condition of Bangladeshi female workers in foreign countries especially in Middle East?
Bangladeshi females are basically working as domestic helps abroad while Indian, Sri Lankan and Nepalese women are working both as maids and nurses. The fact is that , they do not receive high salary compared to their three other competitors abroad.
With a monthly salary worth around Tk 18,000, Marzina now hopes to ensure a better future for her 12-year-old daughter who is studying in class six at a school in Chapainawabganj.
“Although I face some problems here, I am pleased with my current job because it has encouraged me to move ahead with my life,” she added.
They, however, do not get necessary services from the government to establish their rights in their workplaces.
Bangladeshi females, in most cases, have to work for long hours -- from 14 to 18 hours a day, and their employers often impose restrictions upon their mobile communication with families and receiving salaries.
The women workers were treated just like Modern Slaves. Physical torture is quite common in Middle East.
Some news paper stories said , Man stapled maids several times and left them disfigured.
Workers are exploited in various ways. As the Housemaids has no opportunity to leave their employers or switch jobs. In many Arab countries, migrant domestic workers are excluded from national labour legislation, and are often tied to their employers through a restrictive sponsorship system known as Kafala. Kafala ties workers to their employers, the kafeel (sponsor), who then determine the working and living conditions.
The employer most often exploited by saying that, they had to invest a lot to bring them for work over and they have to pay the agent’s fees. Showing these lame excuses some employers even withhold salaries for months even years at a time, until the so called “debt” is paid off. Many inflate it to include food, clothing and other expenses.
An ILO survey of migrant domestic workers in Kuwait found that housemaids were working an average of between 78 to 100 hours a week cleaning house, cooking and caring for children and sometimes doing extra duty in the houses of their sponsors’ relatives.
They work for undefined hours. They are not able to practice their own religion freely, they are not given days off and there are cases of non-payment of salaries. Most terrible is that more than 40% report physical, verbal or sexual abuse.
A young housemaid recently helped out of a difficult situation. The sponsor didn’t pay her salary for almost eight months and he was trying to rape the girl. She was sleeping with a knife under her pillow.
The ILO strategy on domestic work serves as a unifying framework for coherent and integrated approaches. The ILO works with governments, workers, employers and civil society in countries of origin and destination to improve protecting and protect the rights of domestic workers as well as to prevent them from being trafficked or forced into labour. Accordingly, the ILO’s activities include-
Support governments to ratify and implement the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) and the Domestic Workers Recommendation No. 201;support governments to revise laws and standard contracts that apply to domestic workers in order to bring them in line with international labour standards, etc.
We definitely welcome and praise government's success in expanding the female workers migration but govt. should be much more conscious about the workers’ security.
To prevent and protest the exploitation of Immigrant workers in the Middle East for female jobseekers, the workers demand the government ensure their protection from abuse and harassment.
Female migrant workers enjoy little freedom in their workplaces. Besides, they sometimes face torture from either their agents or their employers. The government must address these issues.
So, the government should take proper steps in this case and also should emphasizes on proper skills training facilities for female migrant workers. Safe homes would be set up for female workers in their destination countries to ensure better services for them.
Writer: Journalist
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