700 Bangladesh workers unpaid for six months

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Around 700 Bangladeshi workers who have been denied salaries for the last six months are passing days in inhuman conditions with shortage of food and amid fears of being evicted from the camp of their employer at Hasawi in Kuwait.

These workers employed by a cleaning company told Arab Times on Wednesday that residence permits of most workers had expired but the company has not taken any initiative to renew them.

The Kuwaiti daily noted that complaints of non-payment among Bangladeshi workers in Kuwait are common, especially those employed with cleaning companies.

Kuwait stopped hiring Bangladeshi workers in the last quarter of 2006, saying Bangladeshi workers were involved in criminal activities.

There are over 2 lakh Bangladeshis working in that country.

The workers filed a complaint with the Kuwaiti Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour regarding non-payment of their salaries. The female workers have urged the Bangladesh Embassy to expedite their repatriation process.

The workers, around 50 percent of them women, alleged that the company has filed false cases against a few of them, accusing them of abstaining from work, in an effort to deport them and so is denying them their unpaid salaries.

The workers were being paid a monthly salary of 20 dinars, Arab Times reported on June 25.

One of the workers expressed concern that the company may have them evicted from the camp rendering them homeless.

”We drew the ire of the company officials after we filed a case against it. Since then all sorts of tactics are being applied to deny us our dues. We earnestly request the ministry to consider our case on humanitarian grounds,” he said.

The workers said they were facing a serious food shortage and that some community members were providing them supplies out of kindness.

“We have been left in the lurch by the company and we do not intend to work for it anymore. All we are seeking now is payment of our salaries and tickets back home. The living conditions are horrible at the camp,” said another worker, adding that some of the air-conditioning units have broken down for want of repairs and rooms are overcrowded. The drainage system is also in urgent need of repairs.

When contacted, an official at the Bangladesh Embassy said the embassy was leaving no stone unturned to put an early end to the plight of the workers.

Expatriates’ Welfare Secretary Abdul Matin Chowdhury, however, said yesterday that he did not know of such an incident.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh Embassy in Kuwait has taken some drastic measures to prevent exploitation of its workers by unscrupulous employers and create awareness among Bangladeshi workers in that country about the local laws.

It checks the antecedents of a company before giving the green signal for recruitment of Bangladeshi workers. Local companies with a history of violating the rights of workers are prevented from hiring Bangladeshi workers.

Non-payment, underpayment and abuses of Bangladeshi workers by employers in some of the labour receiving countries, including Malaysia, have become a regular phenomenon.

Cheated by agencies and employers, an estimated 2,000 workers have returned home from Malaysia in the last one year. Hundreds of workers were allegedly denied of jobs they had been promised there while many are provided salaries much less than pledged.

Around 130 workers unpaid for 16 months staged a demonstration near the Bangladesh consulate in Jeddah protesting against abuses by their employer, a construction company in Madinah of Saudi Arabia. The company also did not renew their residence permits leaving them in fear of deportation.

In March this year, Saudi Arabia restricted hiring of Bangladeshi workers for households and agriculture sector. Bahrain also stopped issuing work permits to Bangladeshis in late May following the death of a Bahraini alleged to be killed by a Bangladeshi.

Bangladesh has taken an initiative to identify reasons why its workers in many countries, especially in the Middle East, get paid less than those from neighbouring India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

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