Workers victim of ‘wage theft’ amid pandemic
At least 115 Bangladeshi migrant workers who returned home untimely amid the pandemic have faced "wage theft" in different host countries, according to a regional migrant rights group's report.
Of them, 99 were regular workers with legal papers while the rest were undocumented workers, said the recently published report "Crying Out for Justice: Wage Theft against Migrant Workers during Covid-19" of Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA).
Wage theft is a term used when money that's rightfully owed to workers gets withheld by their employers.
The Bangladeshi workers returned home at different times since the global Covid-19 outbreak early last year but their cases have been documented by MFA between January and May this year.
Gender-wise, 64 of the Bangladeshi migrant workers are male and 51 are female.
The workers may have dues between Tk 60,000 to Tk 70,000 per individual in terms of wage only as many of them left behind wages for three to five months, said Syed Saiful Haque, co-chair of Bangladesh Civil Society for Migrants (BCSM), which has been collaborating with MFA in a global campaign against wage theft.
"Besides, there are other left behind monetary claims such as benefits and bonuses," said Saiful, also chairman of WARBE Development Foundation.
He said under the campaign against "wage theft", the primary victims of concern are the migrant workers who left the host country without getting due wage, allowance, or overtime bill.
There is another category to a lesser extent which consists of small-scale expatriate investors who made investment in businesses in the host country and later returned home without getting back the invested money, he said.
According to the MFA report, of the 115 wage theft cases faced by Bangladeshi workers, the highest 63 cases were reported mentioning Saudi Arabia as the host country.
The report showed 50 of the cases involving Bangladeshi workers were in domestic sector, 24 cases in construction, 12 cases in sanitation, and 8 cases in other sectors.
Bangladeshi workers have also reported wage theft from the hospitality sector, manufacturing, transport and retail, said the report.
BCSM co-chair Saiful said the 115 cases have been documented with "evidence".
Besides, there are over 1,000 cases of verbal claims against wage theft which have been collected by BCSM member organisations and are under the verification stage, he said.
Mentioning about 5 lakh Bangladeshi migrant workers have returned home amid the pandemic, he said they were yet to reach most of the returnees to know if they have a similar claim.
He urged the expatriates' welfare ministry to address the issue bilaterally.
Besides, the foreign ministry through the Bangladesh missions abroad can negotiate and reach out to the companies in the host countries and support migrant workers get compensations, he said.
OVERALL SCENARIO
The latest MFA report is the second volume under its "Justice for Wage Theft" series.
The report found a total of 1,113 wage theft cases reported by migrant workers between January and May this year from five countries of origin -- India, Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Philippines.
It said migrant workers faced wage theft mainly in nine countries of destination -- Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Malaysia, Philippines, Bahrain, Qatar, China, and Oman.
Out of the 1,113 cases, 753 were experienced by documented workers and 359 by undocumented workers (32.2 percent), said the report.
Among the cases, there were 22 group cases and 175 individual ones.
In the first report, a little over 1,000 cases for the period of November 2019 to January 2021 were recorded.
BACKGROUND
According to the latest MFA report, on June 1, 2020, a coalition of civil society organisations and trade unions launched an appeal to governments to establish an "Urgent Justice Mechanism" that addresses the plight of millions of migrant workers whose wages have been unjustly withheld by their employers.
Subsequently, the coalition released four more appeals focusing on concerted action to be taken by the UN bodies, governments, and businesses in engaging with existing cases of wage theft and lack of justice as well as the creation and maintenance of effective mechanisms for continued progress.
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