Manik Sarder, 25, is one of the 33 Bangladeshi expatriate workers who returned home by Saudi Arabian Airlines yesterday morning after their release from a Riyadh jail, with harrowing tales of abuse and injustice to tell.

Manik left this same airport less than a year ago for the Saudi kingdom full of hopes for a better life. He paid a recruiting agency Tk two lakh to arrange the trip including his visa and a work permit from a Saudi company, borrowing the sum from relatives. In return, he was promised a two-year contract for a job at an electrical shop making 600 rials, or Tk 9,000, a month.

Instead, "I've returned with a debt of Tk 1.5 lakh. And I don't know how I'll repay this. I don't even know if I'll go home or stay in Dhaka to find a work. I don't even have the bus fare to go home," says the lanky youth who hails from a remote village of Gowrnodi, Barisal.

The first jolt came right after his arrival in the oil-rich kingdom, when his sponsor told him to find work elsewhere, as he had none at the time. After a month of hunting, Manik landed a job at a grocery shop for 500 rials (Tk 7,500) a month. After paying his rent and for meals, he could save but little to send back home.

But this did not last for long. He was arrested for working at a place not specified in his work permit. Manik says when he resisted the arrest, insisting that he had a licence to work, Saudi police slapped and beat him up.

He was sent to a jail in Riyadh, where more than a thousand Bangladeshis are being held for not having licence to work or changing sponsors without permission, the returned workers say.

They allege there are two lakh illegal Bangladeshi workers in Saudi Arabia, many of whom are languishing in prisons across the desert kingdom. However The Daily Star could not corroborate the figure.

According to official sources, an estimated 15 lakh Bangladeshis are working in Saudi Arabia, making it the top overseas destination of Bangladeshi labour. Every year, Bangladeshi expatriates remit over $3 billion, more than half of which comes from Saudi Arabia.

TALES OF MISERY
"The condition of Bangladeshis in Saudi is horrible," says one of the returned workers requesting anonymity.

"Saudi businessmen are making a lot of money selling visas and work permits, while thousands of Bangladeshis are not getting paid," he says. "While the ambassadors of the Philippines, India and Pakistan care for their workers and take immediate actions when they receive complaints about salaries or changes of sponsors, but the Bangladeshi ambassador is too busy making contacts with the elite to care," alleges the embittered man.

He says he changed his sponsors' names in his free visa thrice, paying a good 2,000 rials at the first time, 4,500 at second and 6,000 at the third.

Another of the 33 returnees, Nurul Afsar of Feni, went to Saudi in May 2002 paying Tk 160,000. One of his friends arranged his free visa through an agency in Dhaka.

Afsar worked as a carpenter for one year, but never received any pay. Not only his employer, Saudi police also refused to pay heed to his complaints, dismissing his entreaties with threats. He then started doing part time jobs without any work permit, which his sponsor had taken away.

Afsar was arrested on December 13 last year. He had a luggage with goods worth about 5,000 rials, but the jail authorities did not allow him to bring it home. "How do I go to my family now, after two years, without any thing to give them?" he asks.

Mohammad Ismail of Rangunia, like the rest of the 33 repatriated, has more or less similar stories of why they were arrested and sent back home empty-handed. Their experiences closely mirror the tales of exploitation and injustice reported by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in July 2004.

"In the Eastern Province alone, there are dozens of companies which exist only on paper. On the basis of their being registered and licensed, they apply for visas and then sell them," the HRW report says quoting the Arab News.

Quoting an ambassador the report says every Saudi of a certain standing can obtain free visas. They sell the visas to intermediaries linked to recruiters in the sending countries. The migrant workers who come to the kingdom with free visas typically have to find their own jobs and remit monthly payments to the Saudi sponsors named on their visas.

The HRW documents hundreds of cases of low and unpaid salaries, one of the most barbarian violations of human rights: "It is unconscionable that some employers withhold salaries and force workers to leave the kingdom without full reimbursement of their earned wages."

The condition of departure, including official deportations, for some migrant workers afford them no opportunity to lodge complaint against their employers and seek remedy in Saudi Arabia for unpaid salaries and other benefits that they owe, the report notes.

OFFICIAL STANCE
On the repatriation of the 33 Bangladeshi workers, State Minister for Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Quamrul Islam says they must come back if they are illegal.

He also disagrees with the returnees' use of the word 'jail', saying, "It actually is a deportation cell."

Admitting that there are many illegal Bangladeshi workers in Saudi Arabia, he says the blame mostly goes to the workers themselves, as they do not get the free visas verified by the embassies.

Many also go to Saudi with Umrah visas and do not return, the minister says, adding in cases where their relatives arrange the visas, the government can in fact do nothing to bar them from going.

On the alleged indifference of Bangladeshi ambassador in Saudi Arabia, the state minister says, "We've two counselling centres -- one in Riyadh and the other in Jeddah. But, being illegal migrants, they do not come to the centres."

Quamrul Islam says, "We strongly protest illegal migration to any country and will take stern action against any fraudulence by any recruiting agency if any victim comes to us with such a complaint."