Document Details

2008-05-01

Wall Street Journal

15

India is running out of workers with the construction skills needed to build its infrastructure. India's construction industry employs 33 million workers, about 11 percent of whom are skilled, making construction second only to agriculture as an employer.

Many of India's skilled construction workers have moved to the Gulf states for higher wages. Most training is on the job, so the emigration of skilled workers puts upward pressure on Indian wages and also slows training of a new generation of workers. Hiring is inefficient. Workers often gather at day-labor "Nakas" with their tools to find jobs. Most are paid daily, about $10 a day for skilled workers such as bricklayers, and $2.50 a day for unskilled workers.

The largest construction firms have begun to train workers and expect them to stay with them, but complain that they lose many of the workers they train to emigration. Most migrant construction workers live in makeshift housing on the site where they are working; migrants in the Gulf normally live in dormitories. To retain workers, more Indian firms are building permanent housing for especially skilled workers.

About 5.5 million Indians are employed in Middle Eastern oil exporter nations such as the UAE. India in spring 2008 began requiring foreign employers who do not use authorized recruitment agents to post a $2,500 bond for each Indian migrant they recruit; the bond is to be returned to the employer when the migrant returns to India. The goal of the policy is to require foreign employers to use authorized recruitment agents.

The Indian government in January 2008 established Overseas Workers Resource Centers to help Indian workers who are planning to go abroad and those already abroad.

Bangladesh. Some 4.5 million Bangladeshis are employed abroad, including three million in the Middle East. Remittances of $6.4 billion in 2007 were second only to garment exports as a generator of foreign exchange.

The government encourages migrants to remit through official banking channels by offering reduced fees and the absence of taxes. Migrants abroad can purchase Wage Earner Development Bonds at Bangladeshi banks and embassies; the interest on these bonds is free of Bangladeshi taxes.

A Ministry of Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment was created in 2001 to encourage emigration and to protect Bangladeshi migrants abroad. The Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training is developing resource centers to train women planning to be migrant workers abroad.

The Bangladeshi government was criticized in June 2008 for not doing more to keep labor markets in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain open to Bangladeshi migrants. In each case, problems with agents in Bangladesh and the receiving country led to stranded migrant workers, prompting these labor exporters to reduce or ban additional Bangladeshi workers.

Some of the Bangladeshi migrants returned from Malaysia after being cheated by recruiters and complained that they faced pressure from lenders to repay the money they borrowed to go abroad.

The Ministry of Labor and Employment reported 15 million Bangladeshis unemployed in spring 2008, blaming a lack of training. The Ministry says that a systematic training and credential system that certified English and skills could make Bangladeshi workers more productive at home or abroad.

Some two million women have joined the garment industry in the past five years. The 1,500 members of the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association sew many of the garments sold in US discounters.

Bangladesh, with 150 million people, is one of the world's poorest and most densely populated countries. About half of residents are in households with incomes below the poverty line, and more are slipping below the line as food prices rise. Two major rivers run through the country, which lies only a few feet above sea level and is regularly flooded. If global warming raised sea levels, some estimates suggest that up to half of Bangladeshis would emigrate, mostly to neighboring India.

Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka sent over 200,000 workers abroad in 2007; about 55 percent were women, most of whom went to the Middle East to be domestic helpers. There are an estimated 460,000 Sri Lankans in Saudi Arabia; 212,000 in Kuwait; and 130,000 in Qatar.

There are 600,000 to 700,000 Sri Lankan women working as domestic helpers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Middle Eastern countries. Problems such as mothers with infants going abroad have prompted the Sri Lankan government to propose a ban on young mothers going abroad to work, even though remittances are second only to garment exports as a source of foreign exchange. Many of the maids are from rural areas and, when they break unfamiliar equipment in the wealthy homes in which they work abroad, repair costs are sometimes deducted from their wages.

Remittances of $2.5 billion in 2007 were a third of Sri Lanka's export earnings. Since January 1, 2008, Sri Lanka migrants sent under government auspices must earn at least $250 a month abroad, but the government revoked plans to establish a minimum wage of Dh 825 ($225) a month for Sri Lanka migrants in UAE garment factories after employers complained that they could afford only the current Dh450-600 wage.

The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) reported in June 2008 that Sri Lanka men migrating to Gulf oil exporter nations had to pay a minimum Rs 60,000 ($550) in fees to recruiters; the SLBFE charges each migrant Rs7,700. The SLBFE reported that recruiters had stopped charging Sri Lanka women migrating to be housemaids, but continued to charge men migrating to work in construction and similar jobs.

The SLBFE licenses private recruiters, and in June 2008 confiscated cash and passports from an agency that promised Sri Lankan workers jobs in Korea. Under the Korea-Sri Lanka MOU, only the SLBFE can send workers to Korea.

Sri Lankan recruiters met their Kuwaiti counterparts in April 2008 and signed an MOU promising to protect domestic workers, who are sometimes abused. The Association of Licensed Foreign Employment Agents of Sri Lanka (ALFEA) and the Sri Lanka Manpower Welfare Association of Kuwait (SLMWAK) agreed that recruiters in both countries were to blame. Sri Lankan recruiters sometimes send underage women and those who fail medical tests, while Kuwaiti employers often confiscate passports.

The Sri Lankans among the 2,700 employees of Egypt's Vilocity Textile went on strike in June 2008. Egypt bans strikes, and the Sri Lankan Bureau of Foreign Employment warned the female migrants that they should go back to work after Vilocity met some of their demands.

• http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=3404_0_3_0

Occupations in services - Domestic work, Trades, transport and equipment operators and related occupations - general, and Other

Public awareness and Researchers

Labour standards, Recrutement / placement agencies, Migration expenses reimbursement mechanisms, and Determination fair wages and labour shortage

Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka

Economics and Law

English