LATEST reports show that human trafficking to Malaysia is still going on as hundreds of low-income group people risk their lives everyday voyaging through the Bay of Bengal to get job in plantations, factories and construction sites. Our newspaper showed how these illegal migrants (Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslim refugees) often take risky wooden boat or fishing trawler journeys to go to Malaysia and die when the boats capsize in the high seas. Recently about 50 people went missing when a fishing trawler carrying about 100 fortune-seekers to Malaysia sank in the Bay of Bengal some 2.5 kilometres offshore near Kutubdia Island in Cox’s Bazar district. Those rescued claimed that the human traffickers deliberately damaged it when the passengers refused to board on other vessels, according to reports.
Other reports show that sometimes human traffickers kill the voyagers in the mid sea and wrap the voyage up, taking the promised money. Sources said the traffickers usually take Tk 1 lakh to Tk 2 lakh per head to transport the job seekers to Malaysia. In many cases, they fail to reach their destination due to strict surveillance of the law enforcement agencies. After being chased in Cox’s Bazar, the brokers changed their route and to avoid detection, they at first bring the passengers to Chittagong and keep them in hotels and other places and the migrants are forced to board on small boats and fishing trawlers at different ghats of Chittagong Port at dead of night. The Malaysia-bound passengers are kept in lower decks or store rooms and finally they are shifted to large vessels waiting in the high seas to smuggle them to Malaysia, according to reports.
It is an unfortunate but understandable practice that people risk their lives to travel to other lands to earn because their own cannot provide for them. If the government actually bothered about the public (and thus developed all the major cities and villages of Bangladesh), a lot of good could have been done for people seeking employment. That is not the case in Bangladesh as the government and its supporters are busy amassing wealth in corrupt ways and ignoring the needs of the people. Even if creating jobs for people is difficult and is a long term project, the government could show concern and responsibly deal with the Malaysian government to ensure safe passage for labour travelling there so that they can be safe (the government could also at least train the people in different skills so that they would be helpful and accepted more openly by the Malaysian authorities). If none of this is done, hundreds will keep on dying trying make ends meet travelling illegally to foreign lands, just because their own is too corrupt or indifferent about their plights.
