In just two weeks, Sukhen Das, 26, has lost 10 kilos. He blames it on his luck and says, “I will never again go out of the country to work.”
Mr. Das is back in Bengal after having spent almost a month at a detention centre in Zabrat, a municipal city of Azerbaijan where he landed after responding to an overseas job advertisement. But Mr. Das cannot return home to Swarupnagar in North 24 Paraganas thanks to the ₹3 lakh that he borrowed from agents to go abroad.
“Too many people are looking out for me to recover the money,” said Mr. Das, adding that even his mother does not want him home. A history graduate, he feels “thoroughly swindled.”
31 victims
Mr. Das is not alone in his ordeal. He is one among the 31 men who have returned from detention in Zabrat.
While several people leave West Bengal and other eastern States to work abroad, mainly in construction projects, there is no data available either with researchers or the government about the exact number of such blue collar workers. “No such data (of out migration) exists in the 2011 census. So it is difficult to quantify, even if thousands are going abroad to work each year,” said Mehebub Sahana, a research scholar of Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi, who has studied the problem.
”We were received at Baku airport by the recruiting agents’ men — Shakil, the boss and one Alimuddin. They kept 31 of us in a small room and gave us little to eat and never issued the Temporary Resident Permit which they promised,” said Mr. Das. Occasionally the men would be escorted to an oil extraction site and shown a few machines. “There was no one in the site but the agents said that we should sit and observe the giant machines to learn how they work. It was all fraud, we realized later.”
Their passports were taken away and eventually they were detained by the police. Life in the detention centre was worse. “It was extremely cold in that under construction centre and we would be woken up at 6 a.m.Failing which the guards used to kick the beds,” recalled Mr. Das. He survived for nearly a month on boiled cabbage, bread and black tea without sugar.
Even minor complaints were treated harshly. “Guards used to beat us up with the walkie-talkie,” recollected Das. The team of workers, from Iran, Sri Lanka and Nepal, were engaged in minor construction work in the centre. “We also worked as carpenters without remuneration,” said Das.
Saudi situation
Yet Mr. Das is luckier than Shyamal Pal, 32.
Mr. Pal, from Bardhaman district, has been stuck for nearly six months in Ras Al Khafji, a town between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. There the blue collar workers occasionally get food and even more rarely, some work. “We are living like animals. Passports have been confiscated by the owner of the company that got us here, so that we cannot return,” Mr. Pal told The Hindu on the phone from Ras Al Khafji. “No one cares,” he said.
In Purbasthali block of Bardhaman, Mr. Pal’s wife, Mamani, however, said the family does care. “I moved the (local) court, and the Indian Embassy in Saudi was informed,” said Ms. Pal, who lives with her infant son and 70-year-old, ailing mother-in-law. Following Ms. Pal’s plea, the Indian Embassy “forced” the owner to pay Mr. Pal some of his dues. “After nearly six months we received ₹10,000 and he (Mr. Pal) got some money too. We were starving,” said Ms. Pal.
As with Mr. Sukhen Das, Animarani Das, mother of Basudeb Das of North 24 Paraganas district who is staying with Mr. Pal, said creditors were hounding them.
“It is a loan of ₹3.2 lakh with a hefty interest and we are questioned frequently for failing to pay,” said Ms. Das. She said the local agent who took the money to send Mr. Das to Saudi Arabia could not be traced. “I heard he is in South 24 Paraganas (adjacent district) but I’m too old to chase him now,” said Ms. Das.
Dubious agents
A senior State government official who has handled such cases points to a pattern. “There are dubious agents who usually do not procure a work permit from the respective (country’s) governments but fly workers in huge numbers from parts of India on tourist visas,” he said.
Bengal’s blue collar emigrants are “mostly illiterate”, said Mr. Sahana.
“In Kerala, Karnataka or Maharashtra they have more than 40 years of international migration experience. But in the case of the Bengali work force, they started going abroad over last 10 years in the declining phase of Gulf migration and international crisis of labour migration,” Mr. Sahana said.
Even the Protector of Emigrants (PoE), under the Ministry of External Affairs, in Kolkata, responsible for granting emigration clearance to blue collar workers, does not have a record of the people travelling abroad. The reason is obvious in the Salt Lake office of the PoE. In one corner, a notice mentions the name of the countries “where emigration clearance” is required. Azerbaijan does not figure in the list of 18 countries, whereas Saudi Arabia does.
The other reason is explained by a PoE official. “Plenty of job seekers go out of Bengal through agents who are not listed with us and thus it is difficult for us to guess the numbers.” The PoE in Kolkata has managed to “bring back” less than 50 persons in 2017. Moreover, the recruiting agents of Delhi and Mumbai are more “dubious” than the ones in Bengal. “These agencies operate through their fly-by-night middlemen in Bengal’s villages who manage to take people out of the country offering well paid jobs,” the official said. Once they reach the destination they leave the job seekers to “fend for themselves” like Sukhen Das or Shyamal Pal.
But that's hardly any succour to the family members of Basudeb Das or the family members of the rest - nine in all - stuck in Ras Al Khafji, besides many could not even send their video messages to family or officials, narrating their trauma. Video sharing applications spread their plight from villages of Bengal to the Indian Embassies, finally providing some reprieve.
May be they will be freed soon, sobs Basudeb Das’ mother. Then she asks, “But what is the point? Even if he comes back what will he do here? We are landless farmers. We want him to be back but the family can’t survive unless he goes out of the district again.”
