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On an average 225,000 Bangladeshis migrate every year
to countries primarily in the Middle East for work. Most of these people are semi-skilled or unskilled who spend all their savings to find their way to distant shores. More often than not, those left behind also have to pay a heavy emotional price because they lose touch with those who have migrated. But despite individual pain and suffering, the country is earning a lot of foreign exchange through remittances that these migrants send home to their families.    

Dhaka (Bangladesh)  : Ayesha Begum's status in life has suddenly gone up.  She can now present gold earrings and a gold ring to her neighbour Sikdar Saheb's son on his wedding day.  "It is a matter of prestige,"  says Ayesha, an ayah (child minder) in the Universal Tutorial School.  She looks after her daughter-in-law and two grand children who attend an English-medium school.  Their two-room house has a colour television,  a refrigerator,  a tape-recorder and other luxuries  --  all made possible because Ayesha's son is working as a salesman in a grocery shop in Kuwait.

Ayesha,  however,  is lucky.  Unlike the other 225,000 Bangladeshis who migrate on short-term employment every year to 13 countries across the globe,  her son has managed to financially look after those he has left behind.  Many others are not so lucky.  For starters, with every fourth house in the country having a member working in a foreign country,  stories abound of the tough times that the families go through to send them abroad.  For instance, statistics show that in about 50 per cent of the cases where the male member of the family has migrated,  the family has had to sell off everything that they owned to make this possible.  

Moreover,  many cases of fraud while helping people to migrate are coming to light.  News like Chancal Mollah,  a seeming 'manpower exporter' ,  suddenly closing shop and fleeing with Taka 10,00,000, (1USD = Taka 57) is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. "I lost half a million Takas because of fraud by the person who promised to take me abroad. I went to the police to complain but was sent away because there was no written proof that I had paid the go-between the money," says Shahjahan Sheikh, who sold his land to be able to pay for his migration. Sheikh is now staying in a slum in Dhaka.  

At times, those who are left behind lose touch with those who have migrated leaving them to fend for themselves.  This is not an easy task because more often than not these families have spent all that they had for the migration. According to estimates, five out of every 30 families whose members have migrated have lost touch with the person who has gone abroad.

Women have to bear the brunt of such a situation the most.  For instance,  when Oliur went to Saudi Arabia in search of work he left behind his wife Rashida and his parents.  A few years after he left,  his family lost touch with him.  Nobody could find him for two years during which time Rashida was ill-treated by her in-laws and was also thrown out of the house and she had to resort to begging to feed herself.  Rashida was blamed for Oliur not being in touch with the family.  When the family finally managed to find Oliur it discovered that he had got married again.

While the number of people migrating out of Bangladesh has shown a steady increase over the last 30 years - when people first started migrating from the country - there is a change in the profile of those who are moving out. While earlier it was professional and skilled people who were going abroad for better opportunities,  now it is semi-skilled and even unskilled labour,  which is finding its way to distant shores.  It is also estimated that five to ten per cent of the migrants are women who go abroad to work as nurses, maids and teachers.

The government has,  however, put a ban on the migration of women because the families of women migrants left behind face a number of problems.  Bangladeshi society is still orthodox and conservative and it does not take kindly to women leaving their families to earn money in other countries.  Reports of marriages of girls left behind breaking or some others not finding suitable partners are quite commonplace.

The reasons for so many people migrating are not difficult to find - poverty,  food shortages, unemployment and social and other forms of repression.  To begin with,  Bangladeshis migrated primarily to Middle Eastern countries particularly to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, but now they are also finding their way to countries in South East and East Asia.

But whatever the individual stories of pain and problems,  the country is making a lot of money through foreign remittances,  which these people are sending back to their families. Understandably,  the amount has gone down because the semi-skilled and unskilled labour is not earning as much as the skilled labour did earlier.  But even so the remittances being sent back constitute 25 per cent (USD 1.9 billion) of the total foreign exchange earnings of the country.  Studies have also shown that this has had a positive impact on the gross domestic product of the country and also on consumption and investments.  According to estimates, between 1990 and 2000, migrant workers sent back a total of USD 13,500 million.

Experts, however,  maintain that the money being sent back by the migrants is a lot more because according to them the actual number of migrants is higher than what the official records show.

The transfer of remittances takes place through different routes.  While official channels account for 46 per cent of the total volume of remittances being sent back, 40 per cent come through unofficial channels like 'hoondi'.  About eight per cent of the remittances are carried home by the migrants in person when they return.  At times the migrants also sell their visas for some quick money or send back their visas so that another member of the family can use it for migrating.  Says Mahtabuddin, Deputy General Manager,  Basic Bank, " The government is losing out on a lot of foreign exchange earnings every year because the migrant labourers are sending money through unofficial channels."

However,  for the migrants sending money through illegal means is more beneficial because not only does the government charge tax on foreign exchange sent through official channels,  it also takes more than 10 days for the family members to get the money. In comparison,  not only is the money spent per transaction through illegal channels a lot less, the family members also get the money three days after it is sent.

Interestingly,  the migrants send most of the remittances to their parents. By and large this money is spent for mere survival.  However,  those who are more educated spend it on luxuries like television sets and refrigerators while the illiterate recipients - who constitute a majority - prefer to save it for a rainy day. The younger recipients, between 25 and 45 years of age,  use this money for risk-taking ventures.

The more practical people also prefer to invest this money.  For instance,  land, whether arable, homestead or commercial,  is an important avenue of investment.  While some people have been able to pay off their mortgages thanks to this money,  others have taken land on mortgage for agricultural purposes.  The second most important way in which the money is spent is financing other members of the family to migrate,  which is seen as a way of enhancing the family income.

But whatever the way in which the money is being spent, what needs to be questioned is whether it is worth the price,  both emotional and financial, that individual families are paying for this state of affairs.

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