B A N G L A D E S H
Ban or No Ban, Women Workers Leave Home
by Tabibul Islam
DHAKA — Bangladesh's recent decision to relax the latest restrictions on women seeking work abroad has rekindled a debate on the government's policies on women's rights, labour export, and its ability to protect its migrant workers.
The government has looked at bans, of which Dhaka has had several in the past, as a way of curbing abuses in the main labour market of the Middle East, where workers from Asia make up the bulk of domestic help.
But human rights advocates say it runs up against the right of individuals to travel for work and to find ways of improving their lives.
So when a cabinet committee on the employment of Bangladeshi workers abroad agreed in April that women workers above 35 could accompany their husbands abroad for work, it provoked immediate criticism from those like Salma Ali, executive director of the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers' Association.
"When women are deprived of their basic rights and reel under dehumanising poverty, they opt for leaving their motherland under any conditions, right or wrong, moral or immoral," she said.
Yet others say that after years of exporting human labour, Bangladesh must now look beyond bans as a protective mechanism and look at briefing and empowering migrant workers before they leave the country and respond to their needs while overseas.
According to Ali, between 10,000 and 15,000 Bangladeshi women have been leaving to seek work abroad every year despite the mid-1998 ban.
Dr Tasnim Siddiqui, lecturer in political science at Dhaka University, estimates that some 50,000 women have left Bangladesh in defiance of the ban since it was imposed.
The ban was aimed primarily at those leaving to be domestic workers in the Middle East, where most reports of physical and other abuses have come from. It was maintained by the former Awami League government, which faced criticism from women's rights organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Groups like Ain-0-Salish Kendra (Law and Arbitration Centre), Odhikar (Rights), and the Bangladesh Legal Aid Services Trust had called the ban a "barrier to women's empowerment, employment and poverty alleviation".
Elena Khan of the Ain-0-Salish Kendra wants to see her government pay more attention to safeguarding the rights and working conditions of Bangladeshi women workers abroad instead of imposing restrictions on them at home.
Khan has suggested the creation of cells in each Muslim country in the Middle East that will monitor how Bangladeshi domestic workers in the Arab world — where the environment is much different despite the common religion they share — work and are treated. Each cell should include a woman official, Khan said.
Salma Ali wants to see basic training given to women workers before they head for the Middle East, something that other labour-exporting countries already give to their workers. A rudimentary Arabic vocabulary that will enable them to communicate from the start with their employees and law enforcement agencies should problems arise, she said, is at the top of her wish list.
That tens of thousands of women have left Bangladesh in defiance of the ban since it was imposed also indicates widespread collusion with and the bribery of police, customs, officials of the Manpower Bureau and other authorities.
Yet, to hear it from the authorities, nothing is amiss. The manpower bureau has stated that 17,824 women have gone abroad for employment between 1991 and July 2002, with certificates permitting them to do so from the bureau.
On average, 200,000 Bangladeshis leave the country — most head for the Middle East — every year. Ninety-five percent of them are unskilled workers.
The agency hopes that fewer restrictions will lead to the employment in the Middle East of 100,000 women workers a year for the next two years, with a clear interest in seeing remittances from migrant workers increase.
While activists want to see the recognition and practice of women's rights extend to their freedom to seek employment abroad, the government could find that the result matches its own aims.
Bangladesh's balance of payments is in danger of facing pressure given reduced foreign aid and investment, declining remittances from labour abroad — Bangladeshis have also been returning from Middle Eastern countries — the rise in oil prices and a slump in exports, particularly garment exports.
Overseas workers pumped more than 2 billion U.S. dollars back into Bangladesh last year in the form of remittances — three-quarters of which came from those in the Middle East. That contribution is vital to helping maintain the country's foreign exchange reserves.
Without adequate protection in the countries where they find employment, however, that contribution is also threatened.
A woman who recently returned from the Middle East accused Bangladeshi officials in foreign missions there of ignoring the problems of migrant workers. "The officials don't even recognise the difficulties of the Bangladeshi workers," she charged. "They treat us like animals."
