Editorial
Cheated workers doubly shortchanged
Agencies defrauding them must be penalised
The swelling ranks of repatriated Bangladeshi workers has been common knowledge. What we also know is that redoubled efforts on the part of the government to reopen some of the closed employment options in Middle East and South East Asia are not also meeting with desired success. This is one set of realities that we are faced with and are trying to overcome.
There is another set of circumstances in responding to which we have disconcertingly failed, even though they are domestic in nature and therefore well within control. The case in point is denial of justice to returnee workers who, having been defrauded by recruiting agencies, filed specific allegations against them with the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training(BMET) but with little or no remedy in sight as yet.
Arriving back home in a penniless condition with a backbreaking burden of debt they had contracted on a false promise of a job abroad, or otherwise left pauperised through sale of family property, their knocks at the doors of BMET and Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (Baira), have hardly met with success. In fact, they are pushed further into a state of desperation as their compensation claims from the agencies who extorted high fees from them at best yield fractional payment and at worst, non-payment. Something around half the number of complaints in a given year would be settled but the money actually returned to the victims falls far short of the amount originally given.
BMET has the power of delicensing agencies found guilty of omissions and commissions in terms of paying back dues to the victims but this authority is seldom used. Moreover, underpayments are never mitigated. It is surprising that even in a case where an agency would be delicensed and the Baira advised to pay up the victims drawing on the frozen security money of recalcitrant agency, there is no guarantee that compensation would be received by the seeker.
In the essence, there is no mechanism to really punish the defrauding agencies with a deterrent effect. At the same time, we find no effective counseling arrangement either in Baira or BMET for preventing those who are on point of leaving the country on the basis of dubious job offers from being cheated. The BMET's laws and rules should be given teeth and its logistical and other demands met.
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