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Dalia was tortured, both physically and mentally, while working as a domestic worker at Saudi Arabia. In an attempt to escape, she jumped off the second floor of the house one day, but ended up breaking her hands and legs. She was admitted to a Riyadh hospital for two months and later taken into a safe home at the Bangladesh embassy there. After four months, Dalia returned home on Monday.She was one of 109 female domestic workers who returned home on the day. Prothom Alo talked to six among them, who shared their harrowing tales of physical and mental abuse.
According to the migrant programme of BRAC, about 800 women workers returned from Saudi Arabia in the last eight months. Last year, the number was 1,353. This estimate does not include the women who leave the airport on their own after arriving in Dhaka.
Officials of the BRAC programme consider that they are forced to return for a lack of security at their workplace.
Dalia was in Saudi Arabia for a total of 14 months. She said there were around 400 women at the safe home, all victims of different sorts of physical and sexual abuse.
Among the 109 returning on Monday, 22 were from the safe home. DM Atiqur Rahman, director (employment) at the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), told Prothom Alo they made arrangements as soon as they were reported allegations of abuses. This year responsible agencies were made to compensate around 260 women, he added.
About 80 per cent of the women going overseas as domestic workers go to Saudi Arabia. Bangladesh embassy in Saudi Arabia in a letter to the expatriate welfare and overseas employment ministry said 2,222 female domestic workers returned to Bangladesh between January and March 2019. Many more are staying in the safe home.
The Middle East country signed contract with Bangladesh in 2015 after Indonesia and Philippines stopped sending domestic workers to it following accusations of oppression. Till this July, about 300,000 women workers went to the country.
However, the allegations made by the women workers have been denied by the general secretary of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA), Shameem Ahmed Chowdhury. Original information can be inferred once investigation is carried out, he told Prothom Alo, claiming that many returned because they couldn’t adapt to the foreign climate and new environment.
According to sources in the BMET, migration of female workers increased between 2000 and 2017, but the number dropped in 2018. A number of 73,713 women workers went to Saudi Arabia in 2018 whereas the number was 83,354 in the preceding year. The number has been 44,000 till July last.
According to experts, many women workers are not given the one-month compulsory training before being sent there. The language poses a problem, too. The women who returned demanded that no women be sent to Saudi Arabia as domestic workers anymore.
Human rights lawyer Salma Ali told Prothom Alo that the domestic workers were treated as sexual objects.
“The government does not pay attention to this issue. Those returning are not only victims but also witnesses,” she said, adding, “But no one has been brought to book yet and there is no end to this ugly practice.”
*This piece, originally published in Prothom Alo print edition, has been rewritten in English by Nusrat Nowrin.
Source: Prothom Alo.
