Bangladesh squeezed as crunch hits migrants

With more than 900,000 citizens working abroad, the impoverished nation faces the bleak reality of plummeting foreign income.

CHARMALSHAH PARA, BANGLADESH // After years of lolling about the dusty streets of this obscure hamlet without a job, 25-year-old Taureef Sheikh finally realised his dreams last year. Or so he thought. He migrated to the Gulf six months ago. Since his childhood, the Gulf has been Mr Sheikh's El Dorado, a land of plenty where he dreamt of carving out a new life away from the crippling poverty of his village.

To realise that dream, his father, Mohammed Azad, a 61-year-old traditional healer who moonlights as a rickshaw puller, put everything he owned at stake: he pawned his wife's jewellery, sold his ancestral property and borrowed heavily from a local money lender. In his first two months in the Gulf, Mr Sheikh regularly sent money home. But then, he stopped. Buffeted by the global economic downturn, the company that hired him as a contract labourer started laying off workers, including Mr Sheikh.

Money sent home by migrants accounts for the second-largest financial inflow to several developing countries, often exceeding international aid. Overseas remittances are known to contribute substantially to the livelihoods of millions of poor worldwide. Globally, 190 million migrant workers remitted US$375 billion (Dh1.37 trillion) in 2008, according to the World Bank, of which $283bn went to developing countries.

Bangladesh, a major migrant-exporting country, stands fifth among the top remittance recipient countries in the world. Remittances, which constitute the second-biggest source of foreign income after ready-made garments, exceeded $10.7bn in the last fiscal year. Overseas workers make up 2.8 per cent of the population, but they contribute more than nine per cent of the gross domestic product. But now, remittance incomes are plummeting as migrants struggle in recession-wracked and credit-crunched foreign countries.

The recent UN Conference on Trade and Development warned that the economic slowdown would be a heavy blow to such developing countries as Bangladesh, where at least one family in every village is known to be dependent on foreign remittances. "Remittances are like the lifeblood of the poor," said Sakiul Millet Morshed, the executive director of Shisuk, a Dhaka-based non-governmental organisation that works on migrant issues.

According to the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training, a government body, there are more than 900,000 Bangladeshis working abroad, mostly in the Middle East. The most remittances come from Saudi Arabia, followed by the United States, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait. "You can just imagine the impact of the financial crisis looking at the shrinking queue outside the Dhaka offices of Saudi Arabian Airlines," Mr Morshed said, referring to the shrinking number of people choosing to go abroad.

"It used to be serpentine until a few months back." Nearly 40 per cent of Bangladesh's population lives below the poverty line, according to the World Bank. The International Labour Organisation has predicted that millions more people in impoverished countries could be pushed deeper into poverty this year, largely because of depleting remittance incomes. It predicts global unemployment will increase by 18m to 51m this year. About 200m workers could be pushed into extreme poverty, of which 140m would be in Asian countries.

Yesterday, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development revealed the results of a study that showed 1.8bn people, more than half the global labour force, are working for low wages with no contract, no benefits and no job protection. Charmalshah Para, an isolated village located in the low-lying Shirajganj district 160 kilometres north-west of Dhaka, is perennially vulnerable to the harsh effects of river bank erosion, making it particularly "migration prone", according to a study by Shisuk.

Every year as the nearby Jamuna river swells in the monsoon, it floods houses and devours agricultural farms, generating thousands of climate refugees every year. "You see that spot there," said Mohammed Azad, darting his finger towards a stream of water shimmering under the broiling midday sun. "That's where my house stood a year ago. It got swallowed by the Jamuna." Shirajganj is dotted by plinth-raised houses. Mud taken from the river bed is used to pad the exterior of houses to elevate their level to stave off flood water.

Agriculture, the mainstay of locals, is suffering because of recurring floods. Handloom weaving, once a traditional occupation in the region, is on a terminal decline because of falling demand. "It is the lack of employment opportunities that made me send my son" to the Gulf, Mr Azad said. "There's nothing to do here." The increasing reliance of the country on migrant remittances as a source of revenue worries Mr Morshed. Thousands of migrants face abuse, torture and exploitation, and a majority of these cases never get reported. Because many end up spending more than they make, their families back home remain ensnared in a lifelong vicious cycle of debt.

Mr Azad borrowed 220,000 Bangladeshi taka (Dh12,000) from a local money lender at a rate of 120 per cent interest to pay Abdullah and Co, a broker that promised to find a good Gulf job for his son. According to a federal order issued by the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training in 2006, an agent cannot charge a client more than 85,000 taka, no matter which country he plans to migrate to. Abdullah and Co, which has an office in the Chairman Bari area of Dhaka, declined to be interviewed about why it charged Mr Azad nearly three times the permissible fee limit.

"It is a very common practice to overcharge aspiring migrants who are desperate to reach foreign shores," Mr Morshed said. Mr Azad is uneasy with sharing his son's whereabouts because his "papers are not in order", as he lost his job over four months ago, but he does not want him to come home to face the money lender, who he says, has mafia-like proclivities. "They will kill him if they see him," he said.