M A I N   N E W S

80% Indian women take illegal route to Gulf
Ananya Panda/TNS

New Delhi, August 8
As much as 80 per cent women migrating from India to Middle-East countries take the illegal route, a study has revealed.

What is more worrying is the consistent rise in the number of woman migrants who are left to battle with isolation, confinement and sexual harassment in their new destination of dreams. These stark revelations are part of a study “Gender Dimensions of International Migration from Bangladesh and India: Socio-economic impact on families left behind”, released on Friday in the Capital.

Having surveyed over 1,000 families from migration pocket areas of Delhi and Bangladesh (Dhaka, Satkhira and Comilla), the study, sponsored by the Centre for Social Research (CSR), delves over the predominant causes - poverty, unemployment and landlessness - of migration.

Ranjana Kumari, CSR director, said, “In the wake of the extant problems in the context of illegal migration, embassies ought to have grievance cells in addition to stringent policing to curb the rampant mushrooming of illegal travel agents.”

Reasons compelling women to move out from thier native nations are basic sustenance of family, children’ upbringing, divorce/ abandonment among others, while for men it could be attributed to better remuneration, building houses or lure of foreign land.

“After the woman migrants reach their job locations in foreign countries, their passports are confiscated, they are paid less than mentioned in the contract and to make matters worse, they are exploited and abused,’” Mishra pointed out.

Among the sampled populace, 98 per cent Indian men and 61 per cent women received salaries less than the amount mentioned in the contract while 80 per cent of women vis-a-vis 54.4 per cent of men had to hand over their passports and job contracts etc., in foreign lands.

The most favoured destination for men is Saudi Arabia (33 per cent), which is the second choice for women (34 per cent), while the UAE was the most preferred dreamland for women (46 per cent) that incidentally happens to be the second preferred for their counterparts. With most of them being XII pass, the men are seen as plumbers, carpenters, masons and factory workers, while women are mostly engaged as nurses and housemaids.

None-the-less, the migrant work force of India were found to be better skilled in comparison to those from Bangladesh and belonged to better income groups.