Migrant Workers Melt Like Candles to Give Light to Their Families Back Home

Recent shocking statements made by Chairman K V Shamsudeen of the Pravasi Bandhu Welfare Trust (PBWT) divulged that only five percent of Indian expatriates living in Bahrain would lead a comfortable lifestyle from their earnings if they were forced to return home. These findings reflect the extravagant lifestyles their families are creating with the hard-earned remittances received from their migrant worker relatives and a disregard for responsible saving habits. The Sharjah-based representative said that this problem occurred across other national groups as well, including Filipinos, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Pakistanis.

The TradeArabia News Source reported that this startling percentage of low and middle income migrant workers from India who have worked in the Gulf States for decades, are returning home with little or no resources to further support their families.

The survey from which this information was derived was conducted by the PBWT and included 10,100 migrant workers from India living in the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries, including 1,500 from Bahrain who admitted that their sacrifices and self-deprivation in exchange for the well-being of their families back home yielded little long-term benefit.

Shamsudeen stated that only 2% of Indian families were responsibly saving portions of the remittances they receive, and encouraged migrant workers to discuss the harsh and often unforgiving conditions they face while living in the Gulf with their families, as a way to encourage more conservative spending habits, explore wiser investment opportunities, and inspire greater appreciation for the money they receive, especially given the precarious nature of their jobs vis a vis the recent global economic downturn. Shamsudeen eloquently explained that saving in small drops will eventually make an ocean.

80% of workers surveyed were married, but only 10% had their families living with them in the Gulf.

To add insult to injury, migrant workers are often ignored by their families if they do not receive remittances. Families in India were said to not appreciate the sacrifices that their spouses/relatives make while trying to support them; many often enjoy only one meal a day and live in deplorable conditions.

5 Million "Non-Resident Indians" as they are called live and work in the GCC countries, 60% of whom come from the Kerala region in southern India.

This article is particularly au courant given recent initiatives taken by regional governments to forcibly deport migrant workers living in the GCC countries illegally, including Bahrain. Knowing that the hard work invested by these workers will yield nothing once they return home is heart-wrenching.

Sources of Human Trafficking: Tracing Back to the Source

It is too easy for anti-trafficking advocates to attribute blame to host countries after victims of trafficking step forward and reveal the crime that has been committed against them. Of course, it is clear that facilitators of this crime do operate in countries that continue to request labor, and too often they are held unaccountable for their crimes due to the fact that they are citizens of those countries and protected by biased laws. However, attention should also be drawn to what we refer to as "source" countries and the recruitment agencies that are responsible for hiring migrant and domestic workers under false and coercive contracts and directly contribute to a cycle that has resulted in the modern-day enslavement of 27 million men, women and children throughout the world.

Tracing the problem back to its source:
The financial cut that these agencies make parallels with the number of heads they can process and provide to needy companies (phony or not) thousands of miles away, limiting any accountability and their direct involvement almost by default, and results in a certain dollar/rupee/dinar prize. Individuals from countries sprawling across South and Southeast Asia often come from poor, rural communities, are uneducated, and seek out the myths of prosperity and foreseeable remittances for their families that are highlighted by despicable staff members working in local recruitment agencies. As a result of their limited eduction and the justifiable, but undeserved trust they place in their fellow countrymen, migrant and domestic workers are easily manipulated into contracts that offer few details of the type of employment to which they are assigned.

Information pertaining to accommodations, rights to travel, vacation periods, salaries and the rights (or lack of) they are guaranteed under local law can be falsified or may even be unavailable and deferred to the host country's employer or sponsor to divulge upon arrival in-country. Sometimes these contracts are not even available in the worker's own language, and more often than not, the worker is not even able to read. Recruitment agencies are the source for victims of sex trafficking, and the trafficking of underage children, given their ability to either falsify official documents like passports or birth certificates, or promise employment for women or children in legitimate companies that do not really exist - forcing them into the sex industry.

Efforts to regulate the activities of recruitment agencies are being exerted by countries like India, but they lack the funding and means to provide adequate protections to the thousands of workers looking to create a livelihood overseas each year. Similarly, initiatives like orientations for newly arrived workers and workshops providing information on their legal rights and local labor law are being led by some of the Gulf countries. These orientations are essential to providing much needed information to vulnerable and naive workers expecting new opportunities, rather than the nightmare that many actually face.