Inter Press Service - December 18, 2003
Qurratul Ain Tahmina

The women, including Bedana, have one common context: their husbands have gone to Malaysia over the last decade in search of fortune. Many are still there.

There are more than 100,000 skilled workers in Malaysia, but the figure could rise to 300,000 if undocumented workers are counted, working in factories to construction sites.

Bedana herself is from the village of Maijhail in Sirajganj district, northern Bangladesh. One in every three households in the nearby villages has at least one male member working in Malaysia, one of Asia's major labour receiving countries.

Bedana's husband Lal Mia will never come back. "My husband went there in 1991," she tells IPS. "He had to pay the middleman 45,000 takas (750 U.S. dollars). I had sold my jewellery and borrowed 15,000 takas (250 dollars) from a local moneylender to gather the amount."

"I soon got a letter from him saying that he had got a job in a steel factory," but the letters that came later disclosed that the middleman had cheated him, she recalls.

The man had left Lal Mia with instructions to join a certain factory. Arriving at the factory next day, Lal Mia found that no job awaited him there. "While I was happy with the thought of him secure with a good job, he was in fact roaming the streets in a strange city, penniless and hungry." Bedana's voice shakes ever so slightly, but her eyes behind the glasses remain clear and disillusioned.

Her husband had left Bangladesh broke. "He used to be a weaver, and had taken a bank loan of 96,000 takas (2,000 dollars) for expanding his business," explains Bedana. "But the 1988 floods ruined his small handloom factory."

Then he was caught up in a craze for going to Brunei and sold his factory. "But soon discouraged by news of bad days in Brunei, he invested the money in cloth trading," recounts Bedana. "It went well for one year. Then while coming home with the year-ending cash, he was robbed on the way."

That was when they scratched up the money to try his luck in Malaysia. "He had left me home with three kids without any money and himself had nearly no cash on him." The middleman was to take care of him until he got settled in his new job.

In Malaysia, Lal Mia eventually met a man from around his village who found him a construction job. "For one year he survived as an illegal worker, sleeping in the woods or under the bridges at night."

Bedana only has his irregular letters to weave a memory with. One year later, a letter brought the good news that he had obtained a work permit. He took to living with 11 other Bangladeshi men, renting a room.

What happened next Bedana found out much later from the other Bangladeshis: "One night some policemen woke them up demanding money," says Bedana. "They told the police that they were legal but the police made them submit all their documents to one man in uniform. The man disappeared with the documents and the other policemen took them to the camp on charges of not possessing any valid paper."

"Three days later he was severely ill and the police took him to the hospital," says Bedana. "He died soon after they brought him back to the camp." His companions in the detention camp later told Bedana that he had been a victim of police brutality.

By then, Lal Mia's nephew was working in the same city and he recognised his uncle's photograph in a Malaysian newspaper that had published the news of his death. The nephew and other Bangladeshis pooled the money to bring his body home.

"They sent some money for us too which I deposited with a bank for my children," relates Bedana. That was in 1992. "Over the year my husband had sent me altogether 12,000 takas (200 dollars) only," says Bedana. "The moneylender, who charged 100 takas per thousand per month as interest, was demanding to be repaid."

There was hardly any time to mourn his death. Bedana sold off what little land they had to pay off the debt. Their eldest child, a daughter, was in her early teens then. The widow soon married her off.

"I managed to put together 5,000 takas (83.4 dollars) and bought a sewing machine with that," Bedana recounts. For nine years. the family survived on the little she could bring from her small business.

Meanwhile, in the mid-1990s, with the help of an NGO in Dhaka, Bedana had filed a case for compensation in a Malaysian court that sought to hold the government responsible for her husband's death. She has long lost track of it.

Bedana had initially gone to Dhaka seeking help from the government's welfare fund for migrants, only to learn that the fund is not generally meant for individual assistance. But the contact with NGOs pointed to her a new course in life.

Bedana got involved with the non-government group SHISUK in 2000, when it started a multi-directional programme in Sirajganj for the overseas migrants and their families. She is now the coordinator of their programme with the female family members of migrant workers.

Bedana has organised 18 groups with 180 women. "We discuss the problems of those working abroad," Bedana explains. "We have health care programmes for the women. We also inform them of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases and promote condom use."

The job has been a blessing for Bedana, not on account of the income though. "I feel God has given me boons twice my losses. I value this opportunity to try and help other women who need the support,'' she muses.

"We discuss the risks of trying to go abroad putting everything at stake," says Bedana. "I myself feel it's stupid to run after this impossible dream. But who would listen?"

The nephew, who came home with the uncle's body, went back to Malaysia the very next day after burying him. Now her 18-year-old son is desperate to go seek his fortune abroad.

Bedana still has the bank loan to repay. Yet she strongly resists the idea of the boy following his father's path: "I tell him that he has to go over my dead body," says Bedana. "I simply don't need money from abroad." (END/IPS/AP/LB/PR/DV/QAT/JS/03)

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