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Text:	BANGLADESH:For Migrant Workers, Risk of Overseas Work Is Worth It Qurratul Ain Tahmina DHAKA, Oct 21 (IPS) - Mosammat Sahana Begum's husband, Mohammad Ruhul Amin, first reached Malaysia in 1995, escorted by a manpower broker who had walked his Bangladeshi herd through the much-frequented illegal route across the jungles on the Thailand border. Mosammat Sahana Begum's husband, Mohammad Ruhul Amin, first reached Malaysia in 1995, escorted by a manpower broker who had walked his Bangladeshi herd through the much-frequented illegal route across the jungles on the Thailand border. Amin comes from an area rich in Malaysian dreams. From these villages in Sirajganj district, northern Bangladesh, come many men going to Malaysia, gone to Malaysia, or back from Malaysia. Once there, the overwhelming majority of them work as undocumented migrants in manufacturing, electronics factories, and construction sites. Like Amin, many go there with forged documents to begin with. ”He obtained a work permit in 1996,” says Sahana. Early that year, the Malaysian government had initiated a process for legalising undocumented migrant workers already in the country. Its freeze on the intake of overseas labour soon followed. Previous to the bar, 350,000 Bangladeshis had been working in Malaysia legally, while conservative estimates put the number of undocumented workers at 50,000 to 60,000. This had made Malaysia the country receiving the second highest number of Bangladeshis working abroad. ”Taking chance of the legalisation process,” the private recruiting agencies of various countries had started flooding the Malaysian market with fresh undocumented labour,” says A Y M Mosharraf Hossain, Bangladesh's labour counsellor in Malaysia during the freeze. Looking back, Hossain feels this had ushered in the Malaysian government's 1996 freeze on the recruitment of all foreign labour. Indonesia and Bangladesh respectively used to send the highest numbers of labour - both legally and illegally. Although Malaysia later resumed taking in Indonesian labour, the bar on Bangladeshi workers remained until very recently. So far, two amnesties granted by the Malaysian government have brought less than 50,000 workers home. Malaysia meanwhile took some 22,000 Bangladeshis between 2000 and 2001 by special arrangement. Things are about to change in a major way and soon. On Wednesday, Malaysia is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with Bangladesh, lifting its seven-year long freeze on taking in labour from that country. The accord, the first agreement of this kind between the two countries, raises some questions unresolved here in the sending country. Sakiul Millat Morshed, executive director of SHISHUK, a non-government organisation working with migrant workers, says that Malaysian employers have always preferred Bangladeshi workers and that upcoming agreement ''is a recognition of the good reputation of our workers''. ”Our government and private labour recruiting agencies must take extreme cautions not to repeat the past mistakes and jeopardise the (employment) prospects,'' Morhed says, warning that there may not be another chance. Malaysia wants Bangladesh to ensure low migration cost and strict selection of labour suitable to the job requirements. ”We are also to make sure that our men do not marry Malay women. The tendency had been high previously,” says Daliluddin Mondal, the top diplomat of Bangladesh's ministry of expatriates' welfare and overseas employment, pointing to what is a sensitive issue with the Malaysian government. This early, bits of news about a probable high scale of legal migration at low costs have already reached the Sirajganj villages. ”These days whenever I see two or three people talking,” says Mosammat Bedana Khatun, ”I find them discussing Malaysia and the work-permit visa.” ”They are all ready to go, at any cost,” says a sceptical Bedana. Her husband had died in the custody of the Malaysian police. Throughout the seven years of the freeze, horror stories of deaths and tortures in Malaysia's immigration detention camps reached home. But people continued to go, paying ever-rising exorbitant prices. Sahana's husband had returned from his illegal fortune-hunt in 1998 and set up a small handloom factory. Incurring heavy losses, last year he went to Malaysia once again. It cost him 100,000 takas (1,700 dollars). The bulk of his loan, taken at high interests from local moneylenders, remains unpaid. Sahana's younger brother too went to Malaysia, paying the middleman 150,000 takas (2,500 dollars). In three years he has only managed to send home a little more that half the amount. ”It takes people like us extreme efforts to gather so much money,” says Sahana. The migration cost should in no way exceed 45,000 takas (750 dollars), confirm different quarters. ”A man sells off all he has and borrows heavily for going abroad,” says Hossain, ”hoping to send enough money home and save some as well.” All fingers point at the various shades of recruiters and middlemen for the overcharge of the cost of going abroad and other irregularities. Some 800 private recruiting agencies are registered with Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA), whose officials say that not all the blame lies on their shoulders. The NGOs and Malaysia returnees however are for government-to-government recruitment. Sahana's husband is still without a work permit and so is his brother. Others like her timidly hope that the agreement would get their men proper documents. ”They should be made legal now under this new system,” says Mosammat Malati Begum. ”Many of them are still in jails,” Malati adds. ”They should be freed and given work. Our husbands went after paying high prices.” Morshed supports their demand: ”Those who are undocumented because of recruitment manipulation and because of whims of employers or for closure of factories and such reasons should be given a fair chance.” The men who have returned broke seek special consideration for being recruited this time around. They have the advantage of knowing Malay, one of the two languages the proposed memorandum requires a migrant worker from Bangladesh to know. ”The employers keep the passports of the workers in Malaysia,” says Morshed, ”and often their manipulations or negligence messes up renewal of the work permit, thus making the worker undocumented''. NGOs and returnees want the accord to standardise wages and other benefits. As the labour attaché, Hossain had ensured an effective system of verification of recruitment requisitions and factory conditions, while keeping a strict vigil on contracts and their execution. His inquiries blacklisted quite a few factories. ”Often when a worker seeks redress with the human resources ministry, the employer simply sends him home,” Hossain explains. By Malaysian law, employers can do that any time. Thus, though the same labour law applies to Malaysian workers and workers from abroad, a migrant worker's rights are severely curtailed. While the labour court processes their cases, the denial of visa facilities forces workers to return home. Mondal says that the broader issues do not come within the purview of the new accord, which is 'strictly for recruitment''. ”As for the involvement of the private recruiting agencies,” says Mondal, ”we will do as the Malaysian government asks. Sending workers to Malaysia is of much importance to us. We are taking all measures to strictly follow the agreement and safeguard our interest.” But the Malaysia returnees, who have submitted a memorandum to the ministry outlining their demands, maintain that in order to really make changes after deployment to Malaysia restarts, the new accord needs to go beyond mere recruitment issues. Learning from the past, the returnees want the accord to clearly make employers responsible for renewing work permits, to provide that workers who have compensation and other cases pending can stay and work in Malaysia meantime, and to clarify that employers can keep passports only with the workers' written permission. (FIN/2003)

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