Migrant Rights campaigners, trade union leaders and the other stakeholders on Wednesday urged the government to ratify the ILO Convention 189 that calls for ensuring decent living and working conditions for domestic workers.
They raised the demand at a national consultation over ratification of the convention on domestic workers at the CIRDAP Auditorium.
The consultation was organized by Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit and Bangladesh Civil Society Committee on Migration, in collaboration with the Migrant Forum in Asia
The participants said that despite their long working hours on low wages the domestic workers lack social protection.
The ILO convention 189 offers specific protection to domestic workers including their basic rights, they said.
National Domestic Women workers Union general secretary Murshida Akter said that the government never cared implement the policy it had formulated for the domestic workers.
‘We want Bangladesh to ratify the ILO convention 189 immediately,’ she said.
WARBE Development Foundation’s secretary general Faruque Ahmed said that Bangladeshi domestic workers faced the worst possible working conditions in Saudi londontoto Arabia and the other countries in the Middle East as they were not sent to these countries under bilateral agreements.
He said that domestic workers of Bangladesh get no access to justice in these countries.
He said thousands of housemaids had to return home facing abuse, torture and other problems in Saudi Arabia.
Caritas, Bangladesh’s Jyoti Gomes said that the wider consultations were needed between policy makers for the adoption of realistic policies.
Bangladesh Civil Society Committee on Migration co-chair Syed Saiful Haque, also chairman of WARBE Development Foundation, called for adoption of realistic strategy for the stakeholder in the campaign for the ratification of the ILO convention by Bangladesh.
RMMRU director Marina Sultana demanded immediate ratification of the ILO Convention for the protection of the country’s domestic workers.
Manila based Migration Forum Asia’s Sunshine Josol and Angela Adnoso spoke at the consultations beside Bangladesh Ovibashi Adhikar Forum’ chairman Nazmul Ahsan, Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Programme chairman Shakirul Islam, Bangladeshi Ovhibashi Mohila Sramik Association director Sumaiya Islam and Sarwar Binte Islam of Manusher Jonno Foundation.
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