AS much as 13 per cent of Bangladeshis who went abroad for work after taking loans by mortgaging properties between 2015 and 2018 have lost the assets after failing to repay the debts. The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics survey findings showed that almost 12.5 percent of male expatriates who resorted to loans to pay the recruitment and travel costs have lost possession of their mortgaged properties due to their failure to repay. And for women, the figure rises to 16 percent, making the average 12.7 percent. We must say that the government should extend their helping hand for assisting indebted migrant workers as the economy highly contributed by their toil.
As many as 2.73 million Bangladeshis travelled to other countries from 2015 to 2018, with 85 per cent of them male. The study found that 78 percent of those who travelled abroad in this period had resorted to loans from relatives, NGOs or lenders. Around 81 per cent men and 56 per cent women take loan to go abroad. As much as 41 per cent of the workers took loans from friends and relatives, 28 per cent received finances from the family, 20 per cent borrowed from NGOs while 15 per cent borrowed from banks and other lenders. It found that 46.5 per cent of these expatriates have no insurance.
However, the cost of migration set by the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) are mismatched with the real cost of migration. Each expatriate has to spend two and a half times more than that set by the government and it took 18 months for them to earn the money – 5.6 months for the female workers and 19 months for the male ones. On average, women have to expend Tk 100,102 and men Tk 471,668 for migration. Despite paying more money than the fixed costs, 53 per cent of the expatriates had no contracts with recruiting firms.
The findings are eye-opening in the awful situation of migrant workers and their struggle to inject hard-earn currency to run the wheel of the economy. The BBS report and other findings should be used to formulate policy and implementation of safe and affordable migration.
