"Can we break the cycle of migrant exploitation?"

The announcement of official pardon for the 57 Bangladeshi migrants, who were handed out harsh prison sentences in the UAE for organising peaceful protests in solidarity with students back home, has brought about a general sense of relief. This is a definitive diplomatic win for the chief adviser, and has raised hopes of closer ties with an important trade partner at a crucial moment—in FY2023-24, $3.65 billion was sent from the UAE to Bangladesh as remittance, making it the highest remittance-earning market for our workers.

However, the severity and lack of due process in terms of the sentencing, as well as a glaring lack of support from relevant ministries and officials in Bangladesh prior to the chief adviser's intervention, point towards a worrying status quo for migrants. It is clear that, working in precarious conditions under repressive regimes with little knowledge of their rights (and limits to it), our workers are on paper celebrated for their role in propping up the economy, but in reality, they are isolated, ignored, and left to fend for themselves...

Far from supporting and protecting our migrants, many officials of the previous establishment seem to have played an active role in exploiting workers through labour syndicates instead...

The interim government is now faced with the mammoth task of rescuing migrant workers from exploitation, both at home and abroad, while ensuring that their efforts do not have the adverse impact of reducing labour outflows instead. For this, the most urgent course of action is to bring back trust into the recruitment process by breaking up the labour syndicates...

The recent events in the UAE have made it clear that workers' ability to organise and collectively bargain for their rights in destination countries are severely restricted. Given how vulnerable this makes them, it is shocking that over the past few decades, so little effort has been put into creating a proper bureaucratic infrastructure and setting up support systems that migrant workers can directly access...

We have also witnessed recently that a little bit of diplomacy can go a long way. It is time for us to realise that there is safety in numbers, and to collaborate with India, Pakistan and other South Asian countries with big migrant populations to put pressure on destination countries. One immediate push that is needed is health coverage for our workers. For too long they have been treated as dispensable, receiving little to no healthcare and being unceremoniously kicked out of their workplaces after falling ill...