Countries of origin

A priority concern for all countries of origin is to ensure protection for the rights and well-being of migrant workers, the payment of decent wages and other basic provisions.

While there are no perfect systems of regulation or a “one-size fits all” approach,

countries of origin have a range of policy strategies which, taken together, can extend the scope and improve the efficiency of their regulatory mechanisms and support services.

with national employment policies and development strategies, and that the parts of the government tasked with administering the policy have the capacity and resources to do so. The key regulatory policies and practices for migrant origin countries, which can be and often are mandated and enabled by legislation, include:

• Close government supervision and monitoring of employment agency recruitment activities, to minimize malpractice and abuses against nationals recruited for employment abroad;

• Criminal proceedings against serious offenders and revocation of their licences if registered;

• Supervision of the recruitment and deployment of workers especially vulnerable to malpractices and abuses, such as female domestic workers and low-skilled workers;

• Pre-employment orientation seminars and intensified information campaigns, to help prospective migrants make informed decisions;

• Support services such as pre-departure orientation and a welfare fund;

• Accurate and reliable information on the rights of migrant workers and support for community-based organizations, to empower migrant workers and help make their voices heard in policy design and implementation;

• Activities to raise workers’ skill levels to higher standards to improve their

employment opportunities abroad, taking into account any concerns relating to the depletion of human resources at home (“brain drain”);

• Training and deployment of labour attachés to countries where nationals are employed to provide them with the necessary support and services;

• Measures to monitor and enforce employment contracts at foreign worksites, in particular through labour attachés and arrangements with host country governments;

• Steps to ensure that the transaction costs of remittances sent home by their nationals to support families and communities are as low as possible and, while recognizing that remittances are private funds, enhance their productive investment, including towards creation of small enterprises; and

• Inter-state cooperation between countries of origin and destination, including the adoption and effective implementation of bilateral agreements or MoUs in conformity with the international human rights and labour standards described in previous chapters of this handbook.

Box 5.13 Human interest story: migrant workers get the short end of the stick

Pakistani migrant workers have very little information about the law in their own country or the destination country. They are given no pre-departure briefings or any information about how their embassy can support them once they leave.

As a result, they are left to rely on recruitment agencies, which, being largely unregulated, can be quite unscrupulous.

“… [B]ut I’d paid for and been assured of an automobile driver’s job,” Maqbool protested when his employer (kafeel) in Abu Dhabi told him that he would be driving a herd of sheep, not a vehicle.

“I couldn’t turn round and go home as the employer wouldn’t return my travel documents and sign my exit permit,” says Maqbool, who had sold his mother’s jewellery and other assets to go abroad to materialize his dream of earning enough wealth to wash away the poverty his family had been facing since generations.” […]

Noor Elahi, a graduate in mechanical engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Lahore, has a similar story of deception to tell. “For the first two months they paid me the salary agreed upon in the contract but, later, forced me to accept just 1,500 riyals,” he [said].

He had been assured of 4,000 riyals a month salary in Saudi Arabia. However, at the time of departure, he did not notice that the work permit he had been given mentioned him as a craftsman much below the status his qualifications deserved.

“The employer was forcing me to accept even less than half of the contract amount as salary, telling me that the visa doesn’t mention me as a mechanical engineer so I have to be content with what was being offered as a technician.”

It is encouraging to see, then, that countries across the region are finally thinking seriously on how to address these issues. The government of Punjab with the support of the ILO Office in Pakistan recently concluded a three-day South Asia Labour Conference where all SAARC countries’ representatives met to discuss, amongst other things, possibilities of regional cooperation on labour migration with the technical support of the International Labour Organization. […]

“Migrant workers get the short end of the stick”, ILO Country Office for Pakistan, Feature Articles, International Labour Office, 2014.

As noted above, most of these measures can and should be mandated and shaped by legislation. Labour migration legislation and policies for origin as well as destination countries need to include measures to prevent abusive practices and promote decent and productive work for women and men migrants in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. It is important that legislation, policies and programmes recognize the similarities and differences in the migration experiences of different categories of women and men and aim at eradicating all forms of discrimination and gender inequality, as well as tackling other vulnerabilities, violations and their consequences. They should also take into account that women migrants are more at risk of finding themselves in irregular situations, in unregulated sectors of the economy or as victims of traffickers and subject to many forms of violence and abuse.

As in destination countries, establishing and implementing a comprehensive policy framework is an essential exercise. It needs to incorporate and reflect the concerns of multiple stakeholders across government, workers’ and employers’ organizations (social partners) and other civil society actors. Given that labour ministries are the principal part

devoted to the role of social dialogue in shaping the formulation and implementation of labour migration policy. Indeed, as discussed in Chapter 2, ILO standards directly concerned with the protection of migrant workers and labour migration governance specifically recognize the important role of workers’ and employers’ organizations in this regard. Such a policy would normally address the components identified above and explicitly link the outward and inward migration of labour and skills with the functioning of the national labour market and the consequences for economic and social development.

An institutional locus for overseeing preparation, deployment abroad and foreign employment is essential. A growing number of countries of origin have an office of foreign employment charged with such tasks as:

• Screening recruitment agents to prevent exploitative and fraudulent practices;

• Setting minimum standards for the payment of wages and terms of employment abroad;

• Negotiating with host countries to extend their labour and other laws to all categories of migrant workers;

• Facilitating emigration processes;

• Settling disputes between migrants and recruiters;

• Collecting information about employment opportunities and examining future opportunities for employment abroad; and

• Producing statistics and conducting research on labour migration to improve the knowledge base and evidence needed for policymaking in this field.

Where possible, such agencies or bodies need to be located within the labour ministry, to ensure coherence with the priorities for employment, training and skills in the overall national labour market.