“That hell,” was a windowless, dark cell in Brooklyn that Anser Mehmood, a Pakistani truck driver, had inhabited alone for four months in 2001. Mehmood was a father to four children, at the time living in the port city of Bayonne, New Jersey on the Atlantic coastline. Guards surveilled him night and day from a […]
The foreign employment sector is still the largest foreign exchange earner of the country. On an average, 250,000 persons annually migrate to foreign countries seeking better employment. Of the total number of Sri Lankans working abroad over 90% are employed in Middle Eastern countries, according to the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment. Commenting on […]
When shop-owner Nazir Masih left Pakistan in the late 1970s to try his luck in the oil-rich city of Abu Dhabi, he did not imagine a future of detention and deportation.
On March 22, the International Labor Organization (ILO) moved to give Qatar until November to reform its laws governing migrant labor. This builds on an ongoing investigation following a complaint lodged with the ILO in 2016 that workers are drawn into “forced labor.” The ILO will determine if Qatar’s labor laws contravene the forced labor […]
In early 2004, Sushila Karki Pyakurel was on her way to Israel to work as a caretaker when she met a government official in Bangkok, en route to South Korea, for a sports programme. As soon as the man realised that she was headed for the Middle East all by herself, he asked her to […]
Hundreds of Nepali migrant workers never return home, not even in coffins. They simply disappear. There are plenty of stories about the high mortality rate of Nepali workers abroad, or migrants being cheated by recruiters. Less well known is the fact that many Nepalis simply disappear while working abroad. The Gulf countries and Malaysia have […]
Over the past twenty years, Jordan has emerged as a critical node in the global apparel supply chain, which in Jordan employs more than 60,000 workers. Almost 70 percent of the kingdom’s garment employees are female foreign workers from South Asian countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Yet while the kingdom offers comparatively favorable […]
People move from one country to the other primarily for better economic opportunities. No doubt it is not an easy option to leave your family and head for a destination where you have to work like machines and go through excessive mental stress. Official figures show that a total of 5.4 million Pakistani workers went […]
Migrants workers are not slaves. They are human beings too, and have rights to survive with dignity like others in the world”, Dulal of Bangladesh said to me, while returning from Qatar recently. In Doha, Qatar to report on the plights of migrant workers, I met and talked to some of the ill-fated migrant workers […]
The Government recently passed a regulation further tightening the current selection criteria imposed on women seeking foreign employment. According to the Government, the motive here is to discourage women from seeking foreign employment as domestic workers or caregivers. Alternatively, the Government is promoting more professionals to seek foreign employment through a Government controlled system. Even […]