12/01/2021 The migration grievance redress mechanism responsibility, language barriers, irregular legal status, work permits, restriction of movement, lack of coverage by labour law, non-functional complaint mechanism and lack of information about rights. The report also highlighted the limitations of the government institutions to deal with the barriers for making migration safer for the migrant workers and ensure justice. In their study report, Manzoor E Khoda and Shahzada M Akram of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), have identified a number of legal, institutional and procedural governance challenges in the labour migration process. They also mentioned that the existing legal framework of migration had not clearly spelt out some important issues like complaint mechanism, worker selection, compensation, etc. Moreover, they pointed out that it had been difficult to enforce the existing laws in a proper manner due to the obscurity and limitations in the legal frameworks. There are also deficiencies in capacity of relevant stakeholders to ensure oversight and control in the process of labour migration. The local power structures including the political influences have been identified as the major constraint in the grievance redress mechanism in Bangladesh, as per the publication of David Lewis and Abul Hossain in September 2017. They outlined five power structure: Administrative institutions, Political institutions, Formal civil society, Informal civil society, and Judiciary, where the influence of politics has been identified in each tier which ultimately affects the local grievance mechanism. THE GRIEVANCE REDRESS STAGES: In the case of the majority of the grievances reported relating to the sub-agents or brokers (so called Dalal), the complaints are: the agents took the fees and failed to send workers abroad, pre-mature return of migrant workers because of having no wages, jobs and abused by employers, death of migrant workers, and even visa trading. Some grievances often arise from the factors associated with the social cost of migration including: conflict over land, remittance management, extra-marital affairs or second marriage, family separation or divorce, physical abuse, money lending and sometimes visa trading. Besides these common complaints, the migrant workers also stated labour trafficking complaints against the brokers or recruiting agents and sued them under the Human Trafficking Act 2012. It was reported that in last three years (2014-17) from Saudi Arabia, which is the major destination country for our female domestic workers, a total of 3,339 returned after being physically and sexually abused by the employers. In another newspaper article it was reported that at least 3,480 Bangladeshi workers died abroad in 2017, mostly due to stroke or heart attack. Among them, 3,429 workers' bodies were brought home through official channels, while 51 workers were buried in the host countries, mainly in Libya, Iraq, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Beside the grievances regarding the physical or sexual abuse and death of migrant workers abroad, some other grievances associated with fraudulences of recruiting agencies were also reported to different grievance redress committees or bodies. The government institutions like the BMET resolve the grievances through a formal process called arbitration and receive the complaints through its online complaint submission mechanism. Similarly, the recruiting agencies' association BAIRA has its own arbitration cell. Moreover, Wage Earners Welfare Board (WEWB) has an online call centre service named Probash Bondhu Call Center through which it is also providing counseling and complaint receiving services round the clock. Intently the arbitration mechanism of BMET and BAIRA could not ensure gratified justice for the survivors. In some cases the migrant workers and their families used the local mediation system called Shalish or filing cases at Village Court to resolve conflicts. For complex cases, migrant workers with the help of legal aid or NGOs sued the recruiting agents or local brokers under the Overseas Employment and Migration Act 2013 or Human Trafficking Act 2012. The following four stages have been followed in the structure of migration grievance mechanism practised informally by the government institutions and the civil society organisations (CSOs): STAGE-1: COMMUNICATION AND CASE FILING: The survivors (here the migrant workers, returnees, left-behind family members of migrant workers) follow two channels of communications to redress migration-related grievances, one is directly communicating with local grievance management committees or Shalish committees and another is to communicating with agents or brokers. https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/print/the-migration-grievance-redress-mechanism-1547821416 2/4

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