One of the main revenue sources of the Bangladesh Economy is remittance, which is sent by 5 million Bangladeshis like us working hard overseas with great sacrifice, hoping to see the development of our families, society and country as a whole. We the national hero of Bangladesh are dedicating our mental wellbeing and physical energy with greatest hope to change our country but in reality we are going backward over the last few decades despite earning record amount of remittance for our country.
Our grave concern is - what is happening to our remittances? What will be the future of our country? Are we going to be dependant on remittance forever or is there any plan to use the remittance for the country's development? What would be the fate of our future generation? Will they be migrants like us or will there be any change?
The answers to these questions are not clear to us. It seems last 30 or 40 years the government was/is concerned with counting the heads of migrants and creating all the statistics to show the world that we are a highly remittance dependent country. It also seems clear that the government is having a relaxed time without thinking of development of the country, without creating employment and there is no long tern plan, strategies, structure or mechanism for the future generation's development.
The migration process and the development of the country are in deep turmoil because of corruption, ignorance of the laws and policies and its enforcement, no coordination, no political will and lack of training and experience of civil servant at the various diplomatic missions.
We Bangladeshi migrants are seen as products and commodities in the eyes of recruiting agents and civil servants. One of the recruiting agents said "our product can talk, cry, laugh but cannot complain because we recruiting agents and bureaucrats are the cronies for each others and the masters of the modern migrant slave." They consider us as money making machines for them and we are not considered as human beings. Therefore we do not have human rights.
The staffs at our Bangladesh mission in many countries have no proper training and lack of knowledge as diplomat. They are ignorant about respective country's laws, policies, culture and the most important they are unable to communicate with the respective authorities of foreign countries as well as they do not have any inter wings coordination. They also don't know how to behave with our migrants. The entire staffs of the mission hide their corruption and insufficient knowledge behind bureaucratic powers and rude behaviors to our fellow migrants. If this scenario continues like hiding and power game then the question is - will the dream of earning remittance bring the change to our migrant's lives and the country's hope in development.
Now the question is should we do something to bring about the change for the future generation?
The answer is yes and we can and we will change the country for ourselves and for our future generations. Therefore we have created a movement called International Migrant Alliance Research Foundation (IMA Bangladesh ) consisting of our Bangladeshi migrant sisters and brothers- Migrant worker, Expatriate migrant and students from all over the world.
Bangladeshi migrants, students, professionals and workers usually fly overseas hoping to gain better education, skill and foreign currency and later they will go back and use that in developing their lives and the country. Migrants come to a foreign country with lots of dreams. But while they are in a foreign country, no proper plan is made for their future by our government. Migrants hope that they would earn some money and save that for better future. Research and experiences with migrants show that their hopes and expectations rarely come into reality. On the other hand, Bangladeshi students and professionals are going abroad and after certain years they don't want to go back because of less or lack of opportunities for them in the home country. They are using their skills for the development of foreign countries.
The Bangladeshi migrant workers also come to a foreign country with no skill or semi skills. After certain years of working, they gain new skills and get experiences. But when they go back to the home country, they can't use those new skills for the development of the country as no such step is taken for the application of skills and experiences. So, in both cases we are losing our skillful resources- one way is brain drain and the other way is skill unused.
The impact of remittance is good to curb the poverty and unemployment in a short term mechanism but in a long run the remittance is becoming curse for the country. People are remigrating, making our young generation to be migrants; we are far from education, production and positive activities. A big number of citizens are shying away from agriculture rather everybody dreaming to be a migrant. In future our education, agriculture and other important sectors will collapse because we are creating a system of migrants from generation to generation instead of creating innovative method of using the skills and knowledge of migrants to develop the country so that we don't need to go through remigration process.
The way to fulfill our dream as a migrant coming together under the platform of IMA Bangladesh and share our views together as well as voice out our will together. We are inviting all of you to join IMA to change and reform our Bangladesh and our future generation. |
