“We try to stop them, but they want to go. They say that Allah may help them to find a good malik. And so, they go; and we let them go because we need food, because here we don’t have enough. Here they have no work, and we have no land. And so, we, mothers, also start to hope that Allah will help them and one day they will be able to buy some land to work on.” These are the words of Fatema Begum, who lives in Hatiya Island (Noakhali), and whose son has just left to go fishing in Oman.
The first striking view of Hatiya is the high number of working children compared to other places in Bangladesh – a clear sign of poverty. According to the most recent BBS census, Hatiya is ranked among the 10 percent of the worst upazilas concerning education of children (e.g. number of schools and teachers, school attendance rate). The literacy rate here just reaches 34.2 percent.
Hatiya is prone to several environmental disasters among which land erosion is a major problem. Land erosion is particularly strong at its northern part, and the problem has largely increased in the last 20 years, leading to the displacement of many inhabitants. Erosion is partly compensated by the emergence of land in the south where the erosion victims gather on khas land, mostly on the embankments, which is an unsafe location in case of cyclones or water surge.
There is no industry in Hatiya; the only economic activities available are farming, fishing and very small local businesses. The situation is better during fishing season, which lasts for six months a year. Once over, competition for getting employment in the fields as day labourers – the only work available in the area – becomes intense. There is thus a high rate of unemployment, particularly among landless people.
To sum up, these people are really poor, many having lost the land they used to have, with no regular income and with no hope of a betterment in the future. Since no connection really exists with the Bangladeshi big cities or with other countries in the Gulf, the only option is to try their luck in Oman, where a local network has developed. It is a risk that many fishermen take. The men leaving for Oman are generally between 18 and 35 years old. Most of them are married, already have children and 70 percent of them are victims of erosion.
The connection between Hatiya and Oman is not old. It is possible to trace its precise origin. I met with the family of the first islander who left to fish in Oman. His sons explained the story. In the 80s, the family was poor. The father once went to visit a relative in the neighbouring island of Sandwip. People of Sandwip had already, at that time, started to migrate to Oman. With the help of this relative, he got a visa and left in 1989 to work as a fisherman. His boss in Oman, according to the sons, “was a good man” and he was soon made a captain. He was thus in a position to hire fishermen on behalf of his Omani boss.
At first, he helped two of his sons to come to Oman, and then his neighbours. The sons, too, became captains and recruited other fishermen. A snowball effect set in, with more fishermen coming from Hatiya, more became captains, putting them in a position to recruit new islanders, namely to sell them visas. It is difficult to assess how many they are, but considering the number of fishing boats in Oman and the high proportion of Hatiya people among the crews, an estimate of at least 20,000 people seems reasonable. Almost all of them come from Jahajmara, a southern village where the biggest fishing boats of Hatiya are anchored and where thousands of erosion victims have gathered.
The visas are sold for more than two lakh takas in Hatiya, out of which more than half go to the Omani boat owner who sponsors the migrant. However, it is illegal for a boss in the Gulf to make a worker pay for his job. The migrating candidate then pays for the visa processing fees and the flight through a travel agent. Altogether, a job in Oman will cost no less than three lakh takas. Yet, in Hatiya, there are more candidates than visas to be sold.
I have, however, found no migrant, ex-migrant or candidate who already had the capital to invest in the departure. All of them had to borrow the largest part of the money. The interest rate ranges from 30 to 50 percent per year. And the full amount has to be paid before the migrant departs (hence long before he may send any remittances).
The migrants have no real idea about the contract they signed. None of my interlocutors could show me a paper describing his job abroad and its conditions. Real or not, the migration contract has been approved by the authorities since all of the men I met had the Emigration Clearance Certificate legally required to leave for unskilled or low-skilled migrant. And, although there are some conflicts about bad or false visas in Hatiya, the vast majority of migrants indeed got a job as a fisherman once they had arrived in Oman. Their disappointment or distress comes from the conditions they actually meet with in Oman, something far worse than their imagination.
In the 90s, the Omani government took steps to develop its fishing industry. It started to subsidise the purchase of boats by small investors. Those “big” boats need a crew of 8 to 10 men and can go on the high seas. At the same time, in a move to settle down its nomadic population by providing them with a job, it largely subsidised the purchase of smaller boats for coastal fishing on which two to three people could work.
In the first case, a foreign crew can legally be hired, while in the second, only Omanis are authorised to work as part of the “Omanisation” policy to reserve jobs for its citizens. Actually, nomads who used to rear goats did not turn into fishermen and, from the beginning, it was foreign labour which was – and still is – recruited for the small boats. It is a general feature in Oman, where the failure of the indigenisation of labour has eventually induced “irregular” migrants….