Gulf social security reforms create opportunities for protection for Bangladeshi migrant workers

Recent reforms in social protection systems in the Gulf after COVID-19 are opening new opportunities for worker sending countries such as Bangladesh to strengthen social protection covers for migrant workers.

“The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are increasingly moving away from the employer-funded social protection to the use of social insurance funds. Reforms such as the one recently adopted by Oman are revolutionary and offer a new window of opportunity for sending countries to engage on better social protection on behalf of their workers,” said Luca Pellerano, Senior Social Protection specialist for the ILO in the Arab States.

He was presenting research findings showing that several members of Gulf countries were reforming their social protection regimes creating opportunities for countries in South Asia to negotiate better protections for their workers at an workshop organised by the ILO Country office in Dhaka to explore social protection options for Bangladeshi migrant workers at home and abroad.

Participants also explored the possibility of leveraging national schemes such as pensions and social assistance to support returnees as well as negotiating with destination countries to provide migrant workers social security coverage for health, maternity, and employment injury.

“Social protection for migrant workers is one of the least discussed issues when we speak about labour migration and re-integration governance - quality employment comes with social protection” said the ILO Country Director for Bangladesh, Tuomo Poutiainen, calling for inclusion of migrant workers in the social security strategy the government of Bangladesh will soon start revising.

Labour migration is a focus for area for Bangladesh’s economic development as a key source of employment for its labour force and the second most important source of foreign exchange for the country.

Vulnerable in "3-D" jobs

“Social protection is a human right enshrined in various international human and labour right conventions that should be extended to migrant workers,” said Pankaj Nath MP, a member of the Bangladesh Parliamentary Caucus on Migration and Development. “We are keen to learn about existing options for improving social protection for migrant workers.”

The ILO experts also highlighted the opportunity presented by Bangladesh’s bilateral agreements with various destination countries as a vital channel for providing social protection benefits such as health and maternity, employment injury and unemployment insurance for migrant workers.

Bangladesh currently has at least 18 bilateral labour migration agreements but none of them have any provisions for social protection. The country does not have any bilateral agreement on social protection for migrant workers.

With support of Switzerland, the ILO will develop a new program to extend social protection to migrant workers across the GCC-South Asian migration corridor in line with international labour standards.

In Bangladesh the project will support the inclusion of migrant workers into the existing national social protection schemes, consolidation of social protection schemes for migrant workers and enhanced dialogue with countries of destination to improve access to social protection entitlements established by law.

“Migrant workers are extremely vulnerable to exploitation as they often find themselves working in what we call the 3-D jobs; dirty, demeaning and dangerous jobs that make social protection extremely important,” said Nazia Haider, Programme Manager at the Embassy of Switzerland in Dhaka.

She said Switzerland was committed to ensuring that social protection would become a reality for all migrant workers, especially through cross-boundary collaboration and initiatives.

The dialogue was organized by ILO in collaboration with Government of Bangladesh under the ‘Reintegration for Migrant Workers Project’ supported by Switzerland.