Thirty
workers came back to Bangladesh, cheated by their recruiting agency and
deported. As they organise sit-in atĀ the Bangladesh
internationalĀ airport, Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK),
FORUM-ASIA member, issued the following statement on 6 April 2009
calling upon the Bangladesh government to compensate their loss.Ā
Thirty
workers came back to Bangladesh, cheated by their recruiting agency and
deported. As they organise sit-in atĀ the Bangladesh
internationalĀ airport, Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK),
FORUM-ASIA member, issued the following statement on 6 April 2009
calling upon the Bangladesh government to compensate their loss.Ā
Ain
o Salish Kendra (ASK) expresses concern on the sit-in programme of the
Malaysia returned workers at the Zia International Airport.
According
to different newspaper sources, 30 workers returned from Malaysia last
Sunday. All 30 of them went to Malaysia through a recruiting agency
named Tangail Overseas. The deported workers alleged that two years ago
they went to Malaysia at a cost of two or two and half lakh taka
each. They, as the story goes, had to sell all their belongings to meet
the cost while they got employment only for 22 days against the long
time contract that had been promised to them. One year after when the
visa expired, in the name of getting visa for further period the agency
took money once again without doing anything for them. Since then, the
workers had to live in inhuman conditions in hiding. Many of them were
caught by the police and imprisoned. The deported workers alleged that
they did not get any cooperation from the Bangladesh High Commission in
Malaysia.
We want to say that it is not unknown to the concerned
authorities that the migrant workers who are the driving force of our
economy fall prey to such kind of deceit repeatedly. The travel
agencies deceive the poor workers in various ways. In this case too,
like the previous times the relevant ministry, Ministry of Expatriates'
Welfare and Overseas Employment, which is in charge of monitoring the
activities of the travel agencies, also could not play the expected
role.
The workers go abroad selling all their belongings
looking for a golden future but come back penniless, which creates a
negative impact on the social and economic condition of the country. We
think that ensuring the accountability of the travel agencies is an
important factor here to overcome the situation and it's the
government's responsibility to do that. The allegation of the
collaboration of the travel agencies with the Bangladesh mission
officials abroad to extract profit from the process is also nothing new.
In
this regard, we call upon the government to take effective and
immediate measures to remedy this plight of the workers. We demand that
the government take steps to ensure that the deceived deported workers
receive appropriate compensations along with the appropriate legal
measures taken against the perpetrators.
