“…but I’d paid for and been assured of an automobile driver’s job,” Maqbool protested when his employer (kafeel) in Abu Dhabi told him that he would be driving a herd of sheep, not a vehicle.

“I couldn’t turn round and go home as the employer wouldn’t return my travel documents and sign my exit permit,” says Maqbool, who had sold his mother’s jewellery and other assets to go abroad to materialize his dream of earning enough wealth to wash away the poverty his family had been facing since generations.

Maqbool suffered both physically and financially for almost four years at the hands of his ‘master’ before he could return home much to the relief of his ailing mother and siblings. Living under almost captive conditions in the vast desert he could neither speak nor understand the local language (Arabic), and remained out of touch with his family during all this time.
 

One might think that it is only unskilled or less skilled and less educated workers who are vulnerable to exploitation. Statistics show that 38 percent of Pakistani workers going abroad were in the category of unskilled, 40.03 percent skilled and only 0.8 percent highly skilled and 1.9 percent highly qualified.

The employer was forcing me to accept even less than half of the contract amount, ... so I have to be content with what was being offered as a technician."

 

But even Noor Elahi, a graduate in mechanical engineering from the UET, Lahore, has a similar story of deception to tell. “For the first two months they paid me the salary agreed upon in the contract but, later, forced me to accept just 1,500 riyals,” he told Dawn.

He had been assured of 4,000 riyals a month salary in Saudi Arabia. However, at the time of departure, he did not notice that the work permit he had been given mentioned him as a craftsman much below the status his qualifications deserved.
 

“The employer was forcing me to accept even less than half of the contract amount as salary, telling me that the visa doesn’t mention me as a mechanical engineer so I have to be content with what was being offered as a technician.”

Pakistani migrant workers, have very little information about the law in their own country or the destination country. They are given no pre-departure briefings or any information about how their embassy can support them once they leave. As a result, they are left to rely on recruitment agencies, who being largely unregulated, can be quite unscrupulous. “The result is you are exploited by the contracting party and no one knows where to complain and who can help us”, says Noor Elahi.

It is encouraging to see then, that countries across the region are finally thinking seriously on how to address these issues. The government of Punjab with the support of the ILO Office in Pakistan, recently concluded a three day South Asia Labour Conference where all SAARC countries’ representatives met to discuss, amongst other things, possibilities of regional cooperation on labour migration with the technical support of the International Labour Organisation.

While labour migration generates substantial benefits for countries of origin and destination, it also creates a range of problems. Abuse of migrant workers during recruitment and employment is a common issue. Most South Asians (34.2%) go to high-income but non-OECD countries, followed by 28.2% intra-regional migration i.e., between the countries sharing common borders like from Bangladesh and Nepal to India and Pakistan, and from Afghanistan to Pakistan and vice versa, he says.

Enrico Ponziani, an expert on labour migration, speaking at the conference said that the Pakistani diaspora comprises around 7.0 million, mainly in the Middle East, the USA, Europe, with men constituting a major portion. Overseas Pakistanis send large amounts of remittances as in 2013, this figure was nearly $15 billion (ranked 10th in the world), but they face key challenges.

To understand and address these challenges, the ILO has launched a new project South Asia Labour Migration Governance Project with the governments of Nepal, India and Pakistan on labour migration. Sadia Hameed, National Programme Officer for ILO says that the project aims to improve the management of labour migration from India, Nepal and Pakistan to selected countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

The project includes several elements from the recommendations that came out of the South Asia Labour Conference, such as establishing migrant resource centres to disseminate accurate information on target labour markets and ensuring that migrant workers are made aware of their rights in destination countries. It will reduce migration costs and abuses and increase the protection of migrant workers in countries of origin and destination by improving recruitment services. It will also involve enhancing training and portability of skills for outgoing and returning migrant workers.

As highlighted in the conference in the run-up to the 2020 Dubai Expo and 2022 FIFA World Cup conservative estimates expect up to one million more workers for the infrastructure projects. Therefore, it is high time a strategy was devised for protecting rights of South Asian workers.

Reporting by Amjad Mehmood, Dawn and Iqbak Khattak, Daily Times