Abused maids rarely gain justice: group

TRAUMATISED Bangladeshi women who return home after being tortured and abused while working in the Middle East rarely get justice because brokers intimidate them and they cannot afford legal aid, a rights group said this week.

In interviews with 110 returnees, 86% did not receive their full salaries, 61% were physically abused, 24% were deprived of food and 14% were sexually abused, local migrant rights group Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Programme (OKUP) found.

Nuri Begum went to court in August seeking compensation from her broker, or dalal, after she was tortured and worked unpaid as a maid for a family in Saudi Arabia for two months, and then spent two months in jail before flying home to Bangladesh.

‘‘My dalal beat me up and broke my leg when I filed a case against him,’’ Begum said. ‘‘I was in the hospital for 15 days. I stay with a friend right now, far away from my house because [the broker] lives nearby my place.’’

Anisul Islam Mahmud, who chairs a parliamentary committee that monitors the work of the Ministry of Expatriate Welfare and

Overseas Employment, said the Government needed to spend more money on migrants and ‘‘nurture’’ them.

‘‘The demand for our female workers is increasing and we have to protect them . . . The ministry is trying its level best, but there are loopholes. We have to work on filling up these loopholes,’’ he said.

Bangladesh is one of the world’s biggest labourexporting countries, about 700,000 people finding jobs overseas each year. But recruitment is largely carried out by unofficial brokers, which opens the door to trafficking and exploitation.

About one in 10 migrants are women. Many are uneducated and poor and they often receive false promises of salaries of about 20,000 taka ($NZ370) a month by middlemen and rarely get job contracts — although this is a legal requirement, OKUP says.

Thousands of female migrant workers come home emptyhanded each year, but only 318 gained compensation — averaging 9200 taka each — from the Government’s Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training last year, the study found. — Thomson Reuters Foundation