The Parliamentary Standing Committee on the expatriates' welfare ministry at a meeting recently formally concurred to allow emigration of female domestic workers and asked the ministry to design a modus operandi in consultation with Baira.

State Minister for expatriates' welfare Major (retd) Md Quamrul Islam said his ministry had asked the ministry of law for opinion on whether Baira as a trade body may deposit money with the government and may have offices abroad outside the foreign missions to look after the expatriate workers.

Presently, only eight recruiting agencies are authorised to send female workers only to Saudi Arabia against a security deposit of Tk 50 lakh with the government by each of them as guarantee for compensations in cases of return of workers due to any breach of contract and abuse.

"This meagre scope has created more problems than solutions. Absence of monitoring of the standard of training and the resultant dodging by recruiting agencies has failed to minimise instances of abuse", said Abdul Alim, executive committee member of Baira.

In a potential market for two lakh domestic aides per year in the Middle East alone, the government's curb is depriving the country of a large amount of foreign exchange, he said adding that it is also encouraging undocumented movement through friendly airports.

Baira offered to provide logistics support and a financial guarantee of Tk 1 crore to the government to cover compensation issues. It will open offices in major cities in the Middle East, create database to provide monitoring support to Bangladesh embassies, and offer shelter and legal support to emigrant female workers, said Mosharraf Hossain, president of Baira.

Baira has already established a training centre in Dhaka and developed a training module emulating the Indonesian one and proposed to make obtaining of certificates before departure mandatory, he added.

It proposed taking of Tk 10,000 as security deposit from the recruiting agencies against each worker to ensure in-house accountability of its members, which will be refundable at the end of the probationary period of the worker.

It also suggested that all the Baira members should be allowed to send female workers, mainly domestic helps, to all the Middle East countries, which is now confined only to the KSA.

Baira is also seeking assistance and support from the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) for post-migration management, Abdul Alim said.

The Overseas Workers Researchers' Centre, a joint office of 10 countries that send workers abroad, is going to be set up soon in Kuwait which will add impetus to migrants' rights issues, he added.

"If Baira gets full government support, Bangladesh can send one to two lakh female workers to the Middle Eastern countries alone and the country will receive two billion dollars more every year as remittance by the workers", said Mosharraf Hossain.

Migration experts and civil society leaders think the move is laudable, as it establishes the constitutional right of both men and women to free movement and work, which has been restricted in many ways for long.

"But the issue of protection of female workers should no way be compromised. The recommendations from Baira must be reviewed very critically before finalising the decision and its implementation should be ensured without any breach", said Dr Tasneem Siddiqui, chair of the Refugee and Migratory Movement and Research Unit (RMMRU) of Dhaka University.

State Minister Quamrul Islam said, "Baira has to take the responsibility for ensuring the rights of the workers, as sending women to foreign lands have always been risky."