Seleucus, you shoulda been here!
For a governing class which cannot bring itself to care the least little bit about migrant workers’ welfare, the latest round of crowing about remittance volumes is nothing short of disgusting.
Bangladeshis abroad boost economy by 7.9 bln dollars: officials
DHAKA (AFP) — Overseas Bangladeshis have pumped a record 7.9 billion dollars back into their home economy in the past financial year, thanks to an increase in expatriate workers, officials said on Monday. The amount, to the year ended June 30, 2008, grew by two billion dollars on the previous year, pushing the foreign exchange reserve to a comfortable six billion dollars, central bank governor Salehuddin Ahmed said.
“We’ve received a record 7.939 billion dollars remittance in the outgoing fiscal year, which is up by more than 33 percent on the previous fiscal year,” Bangladesh Bank general manager Nabagopal Bhowmik told AFP. “It’s the biggest increase we have ever seen since our people started going abroad with jobs. If the trend continues, we will receive around 10 billion dollars of remittance in the 2008-09 fiscal year,” he said.
Great news, right? Now if only the people in power could be persuaded to read articles like this, and then try to do something about the numerous abuses listed therein.
For if the dreary news reports coming out of the Middle East are true, then the goose won’t be laying golden eggs like this for much longer:
The country’s overseas employment ministry said nearly 832,000 people got jobs abroad in 2007 — almost double the number the previous year — mainly in oil-rich Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, and Southeast Asia.
As a follow-up to that rosy paragraph, read Hana’s chilling summary:
Around 90,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers live and work in Bahrain, 10 per cent of the total population of that country. In the year 2006-07, these migrants sent $80 million in remittances home. But the recent murder of a Bahraini man by a Bangladeshi worker has sparked angry reactions from government officials and politicians. The Bahrain government has put an embargo on recruitment of any further ‘unskilled’ workers from Bangladesh. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Malaysia had already put restrictions on Bangladeshi labourers, sparked by earlier incidents.
As often highlighted at conferences and seminars, foreign remittance is the second highest foreign currency earner for Bangladesh. But apathy from our embassies, corrupt middlemen, flawed immigration policies, lack of a robust government response and disparities in labour laws have placed hard-working men and women in international news headlines for the wrong reasons.
But ghabrao maat! When the Middle East and Far East start to turn their backs on you, there are new growth sectors:
In the first six months of 2008, a record 489,312 people — up 43 percent on the same period last year — got jobs abroad. Many of those were now working in new European destinations such as Romania, Poland and Russia, which were increasingly employing Bangladeshi workers, ministry director Salim Reza said.
Romania, Poland and Russia!! No wonder at all. Given the terrible demographic trends that are now at work throughout the ex-communist nations (abysmally low birthrates, greying workforce, declining population), Bangladesh might just have hit paydirt by discovering yet another region hungry for raw muscle rented at cheap rates.
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Reports like this cause distinctly mixed feelings within me. On the one hand, it is good news that our unskilled labour finds an outlet for its energies abroad, benefitting the nation in the process. And yet on the other hand, we must take into account the fact that, in so doing, they continue to suffer the most disgraceful neglect that a selfish, shubidha-bhogi ruling class ever perpetrated on its people.
As things stand, “manpower export” is the only thing that the unskilled are now good for. The push for mass industrialization in Bangladesh is deader than a dodo - the chattering classes are far too busy getting excited over “alternative” paths to development - and in the meantime, the only thing to do with the excess labour floating around (threatening anarchy and chaos at a subliminal level) is to throw them out of the country as far as they can be flung, to any location on earth that will accept them, hospitable or inhospitable.
Back in the day, the tyrant Ferdinand Marcos used a similar policy to rid his country of disaffected young men without prospects, and to shore up his throne at home. Without formulating anything resembling a coherent strategy for sustained growth, our hypocritical ruling class is essentially using bidesh in the same way, as a safety valve.
Even that would be acceptable, but ultimately it is the total absence of any concern for migrant workers’ welfare that sticks in the craw. It took the execution of Flor Contemplacion to shake the Filipinos out of their indifference and get their act together. But though our men should rot in the jails of Arabia and die on gallows constructed hastily in the sand, our ruling classes still remain oblivious to their plight.
Seleucus, you shoulda been here…