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Editorial

Migration with dignity

More efforts needed to improve this sector
18 October 2010, 18:00 PM
EDITORIAL
As the chair of the Colombo Process, an alliance of 11 Asia labour exporters, Bangladesh is now in a position to initiate serious dialogue to bring about some urgently needed hanges in the whole process of manpower export. Bangladesh has today around 70 lakh workers abroad and collectively they send around 10 billion dollars to Bangladesh. Both the number and especially the repatriated amount clearly show the importance we need to attach in this area. Though the government and the minister need to be felicitated for some of the useful work that BMET has done, especially in the area of compensation for defrauded workers, still the nexus between our bad apples and those in the receiving countries who work in tandem to cheat our migrant workers continues to thrive. Breaking this nexus can be an urgent task before the Colombo Process countries. Bangladesh and others can insist on the labour receiving countries to adopt or at least adhere to the norms of the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers. To do so however Bangladesh will have to ratify it herself, though we have signed it sometime ago. We commend the government for planning to use the multilateral process to promote a common stance on minimum wage ceiling, protecting workers rights in the host country and reducing cost of sending workers. As the chair, we are in an effective position to lead the 11 Asia countries from where 2.5 million people leave every year to work abroad. Surely as exporting countries we have both moral and legal responsibility to look after them within international law.The meeting of the Global Forum on Migration and Development to be held in Mexico in November is an ideal occasion for Asian countries to take a common stance and put up an united face to the world. However while the multilateral process is essential, there are some vital steps that we need to take internally. The most important one is skills training. "Migration with Dignity", the theme of the fourth ministerial meeting to be held in Dhaka in April 2011, can most effectively achieved by value adding to the productivity of our workers. The motivation is not all altruistic as estimates show we can easily raise our remittance to 15-20 billion dollars with skills training as they fetch higher wages. The obvious area for us is para-nurse, nurse and semi skilled jobs. Even for domestic help, rudimentary English and some basic training on operating household implements like washing machine, microwave, refrigerator, etc. can qualify our workers for higher pay. A better domestic regulatory framework and its roper and quick implementation is an urgent need. Too many of our workers are still being too shabbily treated and exploited. Here we suggest a dialogue with our manpower exporters and encouraging them, through incentive both financial and otherwise, to weed out the rotten apples within them. There is enough profit in the trade without having to exploit the workers. Strengthening the capacity of our Embassies, specially in Middle East, Singapore and Malaysia and training our officers to be genuinely worker friendly would greatly ameliorate the present sad situation. In conclusion we need to expand our labour exporting market by finding out newer ones. We also must engage more effectively with the recipient countries to provide better working conditions for our workers. Bangladesh can dramatically better her growth prospects by promoting, protecting and training our migrant workers. We are not really exploring our potential here.

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