Bangladeshi workers from Libya return home to an uncertain future

Scene at the Hazrat Shahajalal International Airport in Dhaka

“Apney to okhon ashchen, amra bhor choy-ta theika boisha asi, okhono ailo na” (You’ve just come, but we have been waiting here since 6 am and he still hasn’t come) said Polash’s mother. It was almost 10.30 and I was waiting for half an hour outside the airport for my colleague to bring an entry pass. I didn’t know the lady sitting on the floor with two small children – Polash’s mother and his siblings – who came and waited there everyday from 6 am till the last flight arrived in the hopes of seeing her son. She last spoke to him about a week ago, when he said he was waiting for his turn to get a seat on the much coveted charter flights being arranged for the Bangladeshi workers living in UNHCR refugee camps at the Tunisian border. She said to me, “everyday, before leaving for the airport from my home in Dholai khal, I cook Palash’s favourite dishes because he is only getting a single meal each day at the camps”. There was little I could say to comfort her, except tell her to hold on to her faith and patience. I gave her the phone numbers of my colleagues who were working round the clock inside the airport.

Walking into the airport was an other-worldly experience for me. A large area had been cordoned off and at a glance it seemed a thousand men were waiting in long queues to get registered, collect transport fare from the government and the food packet from BRAC with the help of the Bangladeshi Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), BRAC and IOM volunteers. I was reminded of previous flights I’d taken to Dhaka from Middle-Eastern countries, which were always full of groups of lively Bangladeshi workers coming home on holidays. This same airport would be filled with their hustle-bustle, loud phone conversations to happy relatives and lively chattering and laughter. But today, the scene was so very different – even with so many more of them gathered together, the atmosphere was lifeless. A flight with a few hundred workers had arrived just before I reached, and the volunteers were busy directing the new arrivals into queues so the formalities could be completed quickly and they could start off for their journey – towards an uncertain future.

I went there to observe the situation and to talk to a few passengers, try to find out what they required so that we could develop interventions for their rehabilitation. But I didn’t know where to begin. I was so lost. How do I start? The crowd was widely varied – young and old, frail and strong, quiet and outspoken. But they all shared a tired, dejected and broken disposition.

I approached three little girls, the only females visible in the crowd, sitting and looking happy. They said they had come from Libya with their parents. I then moved to talk to a young man on his way to the immigration counter. When I asked him where he was headed, he replied “Gaibandha. Kintu ki korum bari giya?” (Gaibandha district. But what will I do at home?) I didn’t have an answer. He didn’t know how to face his family – he still owed 140,000 takas of the money he borrowed to pay for his travel to Libya and the local moneylenders were already harassing his parents for the money. One hundred twenty thousand, forty thousand or eighty thousand – it was the same story all around. It took about 250,000 takas for the workers to get to Libya. Selling assets or borrowing from local moneylenders were the only ways for these skilled and semi-skilled workers to migrate. Most people I talked to had left a little over a year ago and the majority had not received their full salaries as yet. Many came back with only the shirt on their backs, as their belongings were lost while crossing the border. Now the so called “promised land” had not only taken away their dream of a better life but back where they had started, in Bangladesh, jobless, landless and in a sea of debt.

They had suffered for several weeks, trying to escape the violence with their lives, struggling in overcrowded camps for days with no food or water. But on the faces of the hundreds of workers at the Dhaka airport who had supposedly escaped death and endured weeks of near-starvation, there was only a numb weariness. They had all gotten used to being victimized. First, by the corrupt system that exploited their poverty and their struggle to leave in search of a future their country did not provide. Then, by the gluttonous companies that thrived unchecked on their cheap sweat. And now, thrice the victims, soon to be lost amidst the more expedient casualties of political warfare.

Abdul Malek is one of the several thousands workers brought back this week. He had been working in Libya as a cook for barely 22 months before the conflict began. All the big bosses and the company foremen escaped with their families, leaving Malek behind without his passport and papers and without paying him 4 months salary. After several days of hiding from the gunfire, with food supplies dwindling, Malek realized he needed to escape. He and his fellow Bangladeshi workers sold their phones, their clothes and anything else they had on them that was of value to buy transit to the Egyptian border. They were among thousands of refugee who were fleeing the escalating violence and spent 17 gruelling days in the dessert with very little food or water. Twenty two months ago, Abdul Malek left his wife, four sons and daughter and his aging parents to travel to Libya on borrowed funds of 250,000 Taka. Four months behind on his salary, he is far from paying back his debt. With not a cent to his name, he is forced to take the money being given out by the government at the airport just to pay for the bus ride back to his home in Noakhali. What now? “Our struggle will not make it into the history books. We have to survive, somehow”, he says, “give us some work, so we can survive.”

[Interviewed by Shaikh Mojibul Huq, BRAC Advocacy]

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-Tasfiyah Jalil, BRAC Communications