Female migration to KSA: Recruiters look to profit, not 'due process'

Sending female migrants to Saudi Arabia by any means spells big money for the recruiting agencies.

They make at least USD1,000 or Tk 85,000 per female migrant sent to the Middle East country.

The officials said these women migrants are being sent to Saudi Arabia without any form of training or assessment of their abilities, simply so that the agents can make big profits.

The agencies rely on middlemen to recruit women from all over the country to be sent overseas for employment.

Once a woman worker reaches Saudi Arabia, the Saudi agency deposits at least USD 2,000 in the bank account of a Bangladeshi agency. It takes around USD 1,000 to send a woman worker, all inclusive.

Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement in February 2015 for the employment of women workers. Since then till September this year, 293,588 women have been sent.
However, there have been complaints of all sorts of oppression and torture there. Over the past three years, 8,500 women workers have returned before the end of their contract due to mistreatment and other reasons.

The returning women speak of all sorts of inhuman mental and physical torture they faced there. Demands have even been made in the Jatiya Sangsad (national parliament) to stop sending women workers to Saudi Arabia.

An agency sent Arati Rani of Lalmonirhat to Saudi Arabia a few months ago, concealing her religious identity. But her employers found out her religious identity and she was driven out of the house. On 26 November she took shelter at the safe home of the Bangladesh embassy in Riyadh.

The government took initiative to bring Arati back to the country and is also investigating the incident. However, the embassy is yet to find out which agency sent her to Saudi Arabia. As she does not have her passport with her, the expatriate welfare and overseas employment ministry is unable to find detailed information on the matter.

Officials of the ministry have said this is not the first instance where religious identity has been concealed. The age of young girls is increased, and of older women decreased, on the official documents.
The ministry has found evidence of certain agencies failing to ensure the required training and health checks, concealing the actual age of the women and resorting to other irregularities.

The ministry is blaming the recruiting agencies for these discrepancies. The agencies, however, say it is the government’s fault if anyone goes to Saudi Arabia, concealing their actual age and identity as it is government’s responsibility to scrutinise the passports and national identity cards.

Around 650 recruitment agencies have approval to send women workers to Saudi Arabia. Almost all of them use middlemen to collect women from all over the country. These middlemen also arrange the passports, police clearance, health checks, training and so on. So many of the women migrant workers do not even know the name of the agency through which they are being sent. The middlemen simply pay bribes wherever required to ensure the women can be sent.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, the owners of seven recruiting agencies said that the agencies had to pay the middlemen Tk 40,000 to Tk 50,000 per woman worker. Other than that, they had to pay a welfare fee of Tk 3,000 per head to get clearance from the overseas employment regulatory body, Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET). Another Tk 25,000 to Tk 30,000 was spent on one-way air fare to Saudi Arabia. In all, an agency spends around Tk 80,000 to Tk 85,000 per woman worker.

According to BMET, 73,713 women were sent to Saudi Arabia in 2018. In 2017, a total of 83,354 were sent. Till November this year, 58,283 women workers have been sent from Bangladesh to Saudi Arabia. On average, over the past three years, over 70,000 women were sent there for employment. So at the rate of Tk 170,000 per head, the recruitment agencies are making Tk 12 billion per year.

Executive director of Bangladesh Nari Sramik Kendra, Sumaiya Islam, told Prothom Alo that the agencies are displaying a propensity towards slave trade, making money quick and easy. The middlemen are simply grabbing anyone they can and sending them abroad. It’s all about the money.

Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) has said that if a female migrant runs away from her job within three months of being sent there, another woman worker has to be sent in her stead. They are not paid anything extra for this. It is a loss.

Official records show that of the 300,000 women sent to Saudi Arabia, around 8000 returned before the completion of their contract. Not all of them came back within the first three months of their jobs. But BAIRA claims that many more have returned than shown on the government records.

BAIRA secretary general Shamim Ahmed Chowdhury, however, said that an agency does not make more than 200 dollars per head. And costs spiral further if the women return back home. It is easy to imagine huge profits when looking from the outside, Shamim added. The prime minister’s office recently issued directives to the expatriates welfare and overseas employment ministry to resolve the irregularities in sending women workers abroad.

The ministry held a meeting on 15 December with the recruitment agencies. Expatriates welfare and overseas employment ministry secretary Selim Reza, told BAIRA, “You have left the entire recruitment process to the middle-men. You don’t even see the women you are sending. None of these women even know the name of the agencies through which they are going. Your work is simply to board them on the plane and get approval of our office. Things cannot continue in this manner."

Irregularities in age, health check, training

The minimum age for female migrants to be sent to Saudi Arabia is 25 and maximum 45. However, in a letter sent to the PM’s office by the Bangladesh embassy in Riyadh, it was seen six agencies had sent six women by increasing their age on the documents. And the age of eight women had been decreased on paper by a number of other agencies.

The BMET DG said that the matter is being investigated and due action will be taken.

The letter from the PM’s office also said that 41 women had been sent without any health checks.

The Saudi embassy found evidence of 21 women being sent without due training.

The agencies, accused of failing to ensure the training, said that the training was carried out at the ministry’s Technical Training centre (TTC). They ask how it was their fault if the centre didn’t provide proper training.

BMET officials, however, said that the middlemen simply paid bribes and took certificates from TTC. The ministry has now made it compulsory for the women to stay at the centre during the training period.

Suicide in Saudi Arabia

The Wage Earners Welfare Board under the expatriates welfare and overseas ministry is looking into the death of 311 women workers in Saudi Arabia as a result of torture, accidents and other reasons. Of them, 53 had committed suicide.

The licences of 15 recruiting agencies were suspended on 31 October on charges of sending 15 women who were eventually killed or committed suicide in Saudi Arabia.

A BMET official, on condition of anonymity, said that till 9 December, the licences of 167 recruiting agencies had been suspended due to various irregularities. One third of these were accused of such irregularities in sending women workers abroad.

Commenting on the condition of the migration sector, Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) chairperson Tasneem Siddiqui told Prothom Alo, the recruiting agencies cannot ignore its liabilities for irregularities in sending female migrants to Saudi Arabia.
The government is finding all sorts of discrepancies, she added.
Even if it is for the sake of ensuring positive growth of overseas remittance, the government must deal with the matter firmly, Tasneem suggested.

* This report has been rewritten in English by Ayesha Kabir.