Concerns rise over Bangladeshi women working abroad
When a Bangladeshi woman working as a maid in Saudi Arabia wanted to return home last year for her son’s funeral, her employers refused to let her go — even though she was being forced to work without pay, and past the length of her twoyear contract.
Worse, her passport was being held by recruiters and the fellow villager who had helped broker her Saudi job had vanished from sight.
Such “middlemen” have long been a problem in Bangladesh, where a growing number of rural women are seeking work in domestic service in the Middle East. Lacking proper channels for recourse, many suffer in silence. But stories like this, told to the Nikkei Asian Review, come amid a growing push to bring the uncounted and unregulated middlemen into the legal mainstream.
“It’s high time to end this game, where middlemen and authorised recruiting agencies cooperate with a wink, so when a woman gets in trouble overseas, they can pretend it’s the other’s responsibility,” said Sumaiya Islam, director of the Bangladeshi Ovhibashi Mohila Sramik Association, which supports migrant domestic workers.
Bangladesh has 7.5 million citizens living outside the country — the fifth highest national total, according to the UN Population Division. Amid rising demand from the Middle East for female domestic workers, finding and processing migrant labour has become a big business, with 1,300 agencies licensed by the government, and many others operating outside the law.
More than 500 licensed agencies specialise in finding domestic workers, according to Noman Chowdhury, a top official of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (Baira). Yet nearly all are based far from the rural areas where most potential migrants live, and rely on a network of unregulated, unauthorised dalals, who act as middlemen, identifying and introducing potential migrants.
“In the villages, where nearly all these women come from, they don’t trust city people,” said Islam. “If they see a neighbour building a new, large house with a salary sent from overseas, they will do the same and find the dalal — no matter how many stories they hear about women who are cheated.”
The first step in the cycle of migration begins with freelance operators working on commission. These middlemen — male and female — are usually fellow villagers, friends or relatives. Some are trusted, but most gain business because simply they are close-at-hand.
“They are adept at filling the women with false hopes and dreams,” said Tapati Saha, a programme analyst at the Bangladesh office of UN Women, which advocates gender equality. “Many times, there are not any jobs waiting for them. And if the women try to redress their grievances, the middlemen take no responsibility. As there is usually no written proof, they don’t have to acknowledge anything, and little can be done.”
The women are often unable to read, access the internet or understand legal codes. According to Islam, desperate phone calls from Baira members in Saudi Arabia have included one from a prison where a domestic worker was falsely accused of stealing gold from an employer who had not paid her, and the one from Fatima, the woman whose child had died.
Chowdhury, a 35-year veteran of the recruitment industry, works with both government and international agencies to improve protection for women migrants. But he admitted: “It’s true that most of our members would not be able to fulfill the Middle East’s demand for female domestic workers without the middlemen who bring them to us.
“Proper recruiters don’t take money from the women; they get their profits from the employers. But if middlemen take them directly to government training courses then we can’t say whether they are charging a lot or a little.”
Some dalals are said to demand gratuities of up to five times migrant workers’ first month’s pay, in addition to costs for permits, visas, medical exams and travel expenses. This often puts women in debt from the start. The government has established banking channels that can help by providing loans, but surveys show that few women use them, preferring to sell land or family jewels to finance their trips.
Chowdhury said Baira is trying to counter the influence of middlemen — reaching into rural communities with job fairs and information. He also founded one of three private training centres that offer better preparation for workers than the 21-day course required by the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training.
He has helped to push the government to demand higher wages and an obligatory day off each week for women working in Middle Eastern countries — although holidays, he admitted, “are often useless since the women are not allowed to go outside without accompaniment.”
Chowdhury cites the relatively low number of 4,500 complaints from about 400,000 women sent overseas last year as proof that the system is becoming more responsive.
While acknowledging that the number may understate the real level of the problem, he noted: “This is only a complaint rate of 1% ... though even that percentage is too high when we are talking about human beings.”
“[Middlemen] are adept at filling the women with false hopes and dreams. Many times, there are not any jobs waiting for them. And if the women try to redress their grievances, the middlemen take no responsibility” TAPATI SAHA UN Women