The member-states of Gulf Cooperation Council, the largest employers of Bangladeshi domestic helps, are planning to introduce a unified contract system for appointing domestic workers from mid-2014, according to officials and the migrants’ rights organisations.
The GCC is a political and economic union of Arab states bordering the Persian Gulf, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The unified employment contact will include normal clause such duration of contractual term, monthly salary/wages, and other terms and conditions that apply to the type of profession, they said.
They also said as per the unified contact, the employers would have to ensure proper accommodation, food and clothing for the workers and that wages are paid on time as well as permit him/her to communicate with his/her family.
A total of 266,092 female workers (98 percent are domestic help) have so far gone to different countries from 1991 to October 2013, according to Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training.
Of them, some 32,123 female workers went to Saudi Arabia while 67,024 to UAE, 7,658 to Kuwait, 12,742 to Oman, 3,622 to Bahrain and 1,438 to Qatar.
Lebanon secured the top position by recruiting some 77,693 Bangladeshi female workers, the data showed.
Quoting Bahraini labour ministry undersecretary Sabah Al Dossary, a Bahraini newspaper recently reported that the unified domestic employment contract would be finalised at the GCC labour ministers’ meeting scheduled to be held in Kuwait in March 2014.
Bangladesh as a labour sending country welcome the proposal of the GCC member-states to introduce unified recruitment system for housemaids, a top official told New Age.
Zafar Ahmed Khan, secretary of the expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment ministry, said such a unified mechanism would put an end to disparity in wages and recruitment among GCC states as well as help end malpractices and abuses of the housemaids.
If the GCC member states fully introduce the unified system of housemaid recruitment, Bangladesh will impose the conditions to provide their salaries through proper banking channel, Zafar said.
Jordan and Lebanon in the Middle-east countries have so far introduced a standard recruitment contact system for employing housemaids, said Tasneem Siddiqui, founding chair of the Refugees and Migratory Movements Research Unit.
Talking to New Age, she said most of the GCC countries including Qatar, Oman and Bahrain are on the verge of introducing such system, although Saudi Arabia lags behind.
Tasneem Siddiqui, also a professor of Dhaka University, said that the global migrant rights organisations including the International Labour Organisation and the Global Forum Asia have been advocating for long time to introduce such formal contract
system in the GCC countries.
A standard format for work contracts of the housemaids should be agreed upon by the countries concerned to guarantee the rights of both parties, the maids and the employers, she said, adding that the unified mechanism would also end malpractices in the recruitment process.
-With New Age input
