Staff Correspondent

Foreign adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury said Monday that Bangladesh was thinking of ratifying the international convention on protection of migrant worker rights.

Speaking as chief guest at a regional workshop, being held in Dhaka, Iftekhar said he hoped that SAARC would provide South Asia, one of the largest labour- exporting regions in the world, a common platform to protect the rights of South Asian migrant workers.
 
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Development Fund jointly organised the South Asia regional workshop on protecting the migrant workers of the region.
 
"The unending accounts of atrocities and untoward activities that we come across in the media brings us to the significance of the 'International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families'," Iftekhar said at the opening ceremony of the workshop at Hotel Lake Shore.
 
"We, in Bangladesh, are seriously examining the convention for ratification and to enact the necessary enabling legislation at an early opportune time."
 
Quoting World Bank figures, Iftekhar said that the number of emigrants from South Asia reached 11.2 million, which accounted for some 0.8 percent of its population, a staggering 45.3 percent of them women.
 
He stressed that migration management and the protection of migrant workers would require a collective and consolidated effort.
 
"And for South Asia, this consolidated effort is a necessity."
 
"SAARC perhaps would provide that platform in the spirit that engines our regional efforts," he said.
 
Participants from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal are taking part in the three-day workshop.
 
Women and Children Affairs adviser Rasheda K Chowdhury, the special guest, stressed on the need for complete attention to women's migration and exploitation of their rights, as their demand and numbers in the region were growing.

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