Lawyers, rights campaigners and returned migrants on Saturday stressed the need for strengthening government organizations to play more regulatory roles to ensure the orderly, safe and dignified migration.

They made the remarks while speaking at a dialogue on ‘migration laws and policy: Access to Justice for Migrants and their Families’.

The dialogue was jointly organized by WARBE Development Foundation and Lawyers beyond Borders’ Bangladesh at the CIRDAP Auditorium in the capital.

The participants said that the country’s migrant workers facing problems at home and abroad get limited access to justice due to lack of their knowledge and procedural gap of enforcement of relevant laws.

Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training director general Md Salim Reza who was chief guest at the function said that the government has already taken programmes to disseminate information about safe migration across the country so that the country’s migrants could get knowledge before leaving the country.

He urged the attending lawyers to help the abused and cheated migrants to lodge cases at courts or police stations under the existing Overseas Employment and Migration Act 2013 to get their remedy.

BMET director Dr Nurul Islam, presiding over the dialogue, said that although most of the migrant workers were employed abroad now in good condition but few migrants were still facing problems and failed to lodge complaints.

The female workers were facing common problems of language and foods at overseas countries, he said.

 WARBE Development Foundation secretary general Faruque Ahmed said that the female migrant workers were being abused and cheated by the middlemen but those middlemen were not londontoto recognized by the recruiting agencies.

He urged the government to immediately take a programme to start enlisting the brokers with their attached recruiting agencies so that they could be brought under regulations.

WARBE Development Foundation director Jasiya Khatun  presented a keynote paper at the function.

She said that migration sector was facing challenges of lack of migrants’ knowledge at grassroots, involvement of middlemen in recruitment, existence of less skilled migration, visa trading, high migration cost, no protection of migrants at MoUs and lack of their access to the justice.

Country coordinator of Lawyers beyond Borders Bangladesh Abdullah Al Hasan said there were so many laws but the migrant workers were not getting the justice due to lack of information and procedural gap of enforcement of the relevant laws.

About 53 cases were filed in Cox’s Bazar about human trafficking of the migrants by sea, he said, adding that people did not know how many were convicted on those cases.

Bangladesh Ovibashi Odhikar Forum Chairman Nazmul Ahsan said that grassroots organizations and agencies should be made aware of relevant laws by presenting proper information at coordination meeting of deputy commissioners.

INAFI Bangladesh Chief Executive Officer Atiqun Nabi said that the government must strengthen the ministry of expatriates welfare and overseas employment so that it could play more regulatory role to ensure orderly, safe and dignified migration.

Farida and Shahnaj, two housemaids who have recently returned home from Lebanon, said they had to face problems of language, foods and excessive works in the destination country.

Both of them said that they had to pay Tk 40,000-Tk 50,000 to local brokers for getting their housemaid jobs.

Migrationnewsbd.com/ob