YPSA organized a workshop on Capacity Building for Ensuring Safe Labour Migration at Sitakund with the support of REFUGE AND MIGRATORY MOVEMENTS RESEARCH UNIT and MANUSHER JONNO FOUNDATION.
Local leaders, Bankers and Journalist attended to the workshop. The main Substance of the workshop is to build capacity of the local journalists, local leaders and bankers to ensure safe labour migration as a social actor.
Labour migration is the highest foreign exchange earning sector of Bangladesh. Over the years migration has become an extremely complex process, and the labour migrants of Bangladesh experience extreme hardship and exploitation at every stage of migration.
Usually rural people take important decisions on matters affecting their lives through consultation with community leaders, teachers and NGO activists.
Public representatives of the local government are potential source of dissemination of information and services about processing migration and other related issues. They are close to the people living at the grassroots. It is observed that common people at the grassroots seek advice from local leaders on matters of importance in their lives.
Migration is one of those issues. However, there is little information available to these local leaders with which they can help a potential migrant worker and his/her family. If trained, public representatives of local government can serve as a channel to raise the level of people’s awareness about labour migration procedure; they can provide services in processing migration. Local level journalists play an important role in dissemination of information. If journalists receive training on labour migration, they may also make wider coverage on migration related issues in print media. In this way journalists will act as a source of combating fraudulent practices in the labour migration process.
