Twenty worker sending and receiving countries of Asia have agreed to protect women migrant workers as they are more vulnerable in major job markets. The Abu Dhabi Dialogue held in Manila on April 17-19 puts safety of women migrant workers in its top agenda for next two years.

“Protection of women workers will be a key issue to countries of origin and destination from today,” joint statement released after the dialogue read.

Women migrant workers from Nepal, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam are leaving in the slave like situation in Gulf countries — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Yemen, it said.

Gulf countries do not have labour rights to domestic helps and almost 90 per cent women from least developed Asian countries are working in these countries as domestic help.

Safety of women migrant workers has been a key dispute among sending and receiving countries from years. Two destinations — Singapore and Malaysia — are safe to women migrant workers because the destinations have been providing labour rights to migrant workers, they concluded.

According to UN Women, of the total 12 million migrant workers in Gulf countries, some three million are women migrant workers. Most of them are from Nepal, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam and work as housemaids — the job that is not protected from any law.

Sponsorship (or Kafala) system in hiring housemaids is like ‘modern day slavery’, where workers could not enjoy even the fundamental rights.

According to Philippines’s Department of Labour and Employment, the dialogue also accepted a cooperation network for emergency. “It will help to rescue women migrant workers in crisis and regulate cost of migration,” said secretary at the department Rosalinda Baldoz.

The dialogue accepted to classify skills and recognise productivity of workers to set salary and benefits along with defining qualifications for particular job, developing mutually — between countries of origin and countries of destination — acceptable job contracts and settle dispute according to the standard practices. “Migration policies and regulations of countries of origin and countries of destination will be observed to solve disputes,” they said.

The dialogue highlighted immediate need to rectify International Labour Organisation Convention 189 known as Domestic Workers Convention that provides fundamental rights including employment rights to migrant workers.

Published on: 24 April 2012 | The Himalayan Times