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More than 40,000 workers went abroad with jobs in the first eight months of the current calendar year, contributing to the country’s overseas job sector and remittance earnings.
Sector insiders said the trend of outflow of women workers abroad would continue in the remaining months of this year.
They said the demand for women domestic helps had increased in recent days in Middle Eastern (ME) countries as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic eased there.
According to the data of the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), 41,076 women workers had gone abroad for employments during the January-August period this year.
Among them, 27,472 went to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 7,874 to Jordan, 3,667 workers to Oman, 1,291 to Qatar, and 509 to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
On the other hand, a total of 21,934 women went to different job destination countries in the previous (2020).
The BMET data showed that the recruitment of overseas jobs remained halted for three months (April-June) in 2020 due to different measures taken by the governments of the destination countries as the Cobid-19 was spreading fast in those countries during the period.
However, migrant rights activists stressed the need for ensuring safety and security for women migrant workers as pandemic makes them more vulnerable than the male workers in workplaces.
Sumaiya Islam, executive director (ED) of Bangladesh Nari Sramik Kendra-BNSK, said women workers are facing different types of problems at their workplaces amid the pandemic.
Referring to the women workers’ problems abroad, the rights activist said that the workload of women domestic helps had increased manifolds during the period.
“Another problem was wage theft,” she said, noting that a significant number of returnee female migrant workers failed to bring home their arrear wages and other dues from employers.
“So, they are facing acute economic hardship now,” she said adding the government should help the female workers to get back wages from their job destination countries.
“Besides, many also could not return home following the expiry of tenure of their job contracts. Such workers are not getting regular salaries. The authorities concerned should take immediate steps to resolve these issues,” she observed.
According to the data of BMET, more than 0.9 million Bangladeshi women workers went abroad with jobs during the 1991 and 2019 periods. Most of them were recruited by the Middle Eastern nations as domestic assistants.
(FE)
