Bangladesh and other worker-sending nations now have more opportunity to improve migrant workers' social protection benefits thanks to recent changes made to the Gulf's social protection systems in the wake of COVID-19.

Development. “We are keen to learn about existing options for improving social protection for migrant workers.”

The ILO experts also highlighted the opportunity presented by Bangladesh’s bilateral agreements with various destination countries as a vital channel for providing social protection benefits such as health and maternity, employment injury and unemployment insurance for migrant workers. 

Bangladesh currently has at least 18 bilateral labour migration agreements but none of them have any provisions for social protection. The country does not have any bilateral agreement on social protection for migrant workers. 

With support of Switzerland, the ILO will develop a new program to extend social protection to migrant workers across the GCC-South Asian migration corridor in line with international labour standards. 

In Bangladesh the project will support the inclusion of migrant workers into the existing national social protection schemes, consolidation of social protection schemes for migrant workers and enhanced dialogue with countries of destination to improve access to social protection entitlements established by law.  

“Migrant workers are extremely vulnerable to exploitation as they often find themselves working in what we call the 3-D jobs; dirty, demeaning and dangerous jobs that make social protection extremely important,” said Nazia Haider, Programme Manager at the Embassy of Switzerland in Dhaka. 

She said Switzerland was committed to ensuring that social protection would become a reality for all migrant workers, especially through cross-boundary collaboration and initiatives.