It was around 9:00pm on September 11. After a day’s hard work, some of the 10 workers living in a makeshift house next to a large construction site in Malaysia’s Cyberjaya were preparing food while others were either having meals or chatting before going to bed. Suddenly, they heard the sound of four to five […]
Thousands of Bangladeshis are facing risks of arrest and deportation from Malaysia as its rehiring programme, launched two years ago to legalise undocumented workers, ends today. The risks have been heightened also as the new Malaysian government, which came to power last month, has recently decided to cancel work permits of the migrants employed for […]
Sharmeen (not real name), 35, of Munshiganj, returned from Saudi Arabia on May 24, five months after she had gone to the kingdom for work. “My husband is not accepting me. He asked why I did not send money and why I returned home,” she told this correspondent on June 6. Sharmeen proceeded to recount […]
Every day, Rehana Khatun had to toil for hours for a family of 12 near Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Despite this, she was not properly fed and allowed to sleep for more than four hours. Sometimes, the 35-year-old had stomach ache because of her gastrointestinal problems. But she was too afraid to complain […]
Young Bangladeshi female migrants, working in the middle eastern and other oil-rich countries are increasingly subjected to torture and sexual abuse by their employers. Sources in Bangladesh embassy in Riyadh said that of the victims, younger ones become more vulnerable despite their legal status in the destination countries. In many cases the employers pick them […]
Bangladeshi migrant workers experienced the worst year in 2017, with around 3,500 dead bodies sent back from different countries, the highest number ever in a single year. Most of these migrant workers who died due to “heart attacks and strokes” were between the ages of 30 and 45 — an unlikely age to have such […]
When Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led the imposition of a political and economic blockade on Qatar last month, there were immediate, far-reaching consequences: Flights were canceled and rerouted, Qatari citizens were expelled from other Arab states of the Persian Gulf, shipping routes were closed and airspace was suddenly off-limits to Qatar’s pilots. […]
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 […]
GFMD and global partnership for women’s safe migrationThe foreign ministry of Bangladesh recently briefed the heads of diplomatic missions in Dhaka on the upcoming 3-day ninth summit of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) to be held on December 10-12, 2016. The theme of this year’s summit is: “Migration that works for Sustainable […]
In May 2016, while flying to Malaysia, I met Sohel. A 20-year-old boy from Barishal, the southern coastal district of Bangladesh, He was on the flight because he had been promised a well-paying job once he reached Malayasia by a labour broker in his village. For this verbal agreement, the broker took four hundred thousand […]