Letters to the Editor
Bangladeshi female wage earners' woes
This is about a Saudi princess named Meshael Alayban who is one of the six wives of a grandson of Saudi King Abdullah. She was charged with enslaving a Kenyan woman in California. She forced her to work in abusive conditions, 16 hours a day, for monthly salary of just $220 and withheld her passport. The victim had signed a contract with an employment agency that promised her a salary of $1,600 a month for a 40-hour work week.
In this context, I would like to refer to a recent report of this daily that says that around two lakh Bangladeshi women are currently working abroad, 90 percent of them in the Middle East. Many of them had poor pay, long working hours and some had even been locked up. After returning home, many of the workers complained of delays in getting wages and physical and mental torture that they had suffered there. That means the plight of most Bangladeshi female workers in the Middle East is almost similar to the Kenyan female worker's.
We urge the international human rights organisations to arrange schemes for educating the cruel employers like the above mentioned princess, extend their support to these victims and raise their voices to stop it.
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