Bring home stranded job seekers

MEDIA report said around 2,000 Bangladeshi nationals stranded in Turkey at the moment are passing inhuman life and need to be brought home for safety. These people have mostly assembled in Turkish city of Istanbul from Iran, Lebanon and Jordan in a bid to illegally going to Europe using Greece as entry point or by land through Eastern Europe.

Bangladesh Ambassador in Ankara in a cable to the foreign ministry has conveyed their plight and fears a humanitarian crisis unless they are quickly repatriated. He has wanted to know how to deal with the situation; which is natural because it needs money and other travel documents in most cases that need Dhaka’s consent.

Many were so far held in detention centers as arrested while making attempt to go to Greece by sea. Turkey is obliged to stop such illegal journey to Greece as part of an agreement with European Union to slow the stream of migrants; many of them die in high sea that also included Bangladeshi nationals.

We know many of the stranded are victims of human traffickers who lure our people at the bottom end of the economic scale basically by false promises of high paying jobs and roads paved with gold. The harsh reality remains that only human trafficking are making illegal fortune as they have abandoned the unfortunate young men at Turkish coast.

But it is equally true that our concerned authorities are not running proper awareness campaigns about the dangers of illegal overseas employment and journey that may put them even to death trap. Needless to say many have already drowned .in their attempts to cross the sea.

The risks of going abroad to search for jobs which remains a lure for the mostly uneducated, and often helpless, people from the lowest economic strata of society. They are unfortunately ones who stand to lose the most as they take on a risky gamble to sell everything they possess or borrow money at high rates to achieve the illusory delights of going overseas.

It is the government’s responsibility for finding jobs for everybody if not some sorts of welfare benefit should be available to them. Our government does not care how humiliating it is to see our young men risking their lives in search of jobs elsewhere. They die, they are punished and they work like slaves if jobs are found. Exporting workers abroad is nothing but slave trade. We have to create conditions within the country for living together.