Wage Earners' Welfare Board: Calls grow for subsidies

• Subsidies won't cost more than Tk700cr per year
• Govt mulling allocation in the latest budget
• Migrants bear full cost, including salaries of board officials, staffers
• Each departing worker pays Tk3,500 as compulsory subscription
• Fund lacks transparency as public documents still unpublished
• Around 1.26cr Bangladeshi employed abroad since 1990
• Total expenditures Tk1332.54cr in 5 years since FY2016-17 

The Wage Earner's Welfare Board (WEWB), established to build a transparent, accountable and welfare-oriented institution for migrant workers and their families, could do much more with the help of government subsidies.

At the same time, more transparency in the use of the funds is also a must.

In conversations with various stakeholders, The Business Standard found that despite migrant workers sending $20 billion in remittance on average per year, the fund is still running on migrants' fees and other such sources.

Even the total expenditure of the WEWB, including the salaries of more than 200 staffers, is borne from the money given by the migrants.

Shakirul Islam, chairman, Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program (OKUP), said, "Migrant workers send $24 billion remittance each year. So, the government should have at least 10% allocation from that for recruitment fees.

"If there are any fees, especially for recruiting agencies and others, the government should subsidise those. We must make this demand from the revenue budget."

In addition, migration costs increase when getting passports, police clearances, and doing medical tests. If the authority subsidies those expenditures, the cost would be decreased, experts said.

Rajekuzzaman Ratan, member, Labour Migration Group of National Coordination Committee on Workers Education, said, "An average of seven lakh people go abroad every year. If the government provides an average subsidy of Tk10,000 for them, then it will not cost more than Tk700 crore a year. In our budget of Tk7 lakh crore, allocating that amount to the sector is not a difficult task."

Stakeholders further said that migrants' money should not be spent on the board's salaries and other overheads. Instead, it should be focused on the workers themselves.     

Against this backdrop, the authority is now formulating a new policy under Wage Earners' Welfare Board Act 2018 to give an allocation instead of grants from the government budget.

"Now, government grants are mentioned as one of the sources for the welfare fund. Under the new policy, it would be termed as allocation, not grant. We expect that our salary will be provided from the budget allocation of the government," said Musharrat Zebin, director (admin and development), WEWB.

Contacted, Expatriate Minister Imran Ahmed told TBS, "Currently, the board, as a separate entity, is bearing its expenses from the bank interest of its own funds. Therefore, there is not much pressure on this fund."

Regarding the allocation to this fund from the revenue budget, he said, "It will be looked into by the finance ministry. We have a lot more good work to do. We have to look into whether this is possible under the current rules," he said.    

The minister's response, however, brings up a query: How much money is available in the fund?

The mystery in the fund

After three decades of inception, the transparency of the migrants' welfare fund remains under question as it is yet to publish the available public documents of the board.

Though the statistics on welfare expenditures are available on the relevant website, along with the last published annual report (2020-21) of the WEWB, the board has not mentioned the total amount of the fund.

The authority has also been coy about releasing its income figures despite repeated queries by this newspaper.

The Refugee and Migratory Movement Research Unit (RMMRU) mentioned in its policy brief in 2017 that at least Tk1030.81 crore should have been generated between 2004-2016 based on the number of workers who migrated each year and were charged a fixed rate.

It further said that if the contribution from other sources were added, the increase would be substantial.

The fund is made up of subscriptions from migrant workers, interests earned from the deposits for licences by the recruiting agencies, a 10% surcharge on the fees collected through the Bangladeshi missions abroad and personal and institutional contributions. But the bulk of the funding is raised from the subscriptions -- Tk3,500 each worker since 2015.

Dr Tasneem Siddiqui, founding chair of RMMRU, told TBS, "Over the last three decades, the money from this fund has been spent in areas that it should not have been spent on. We have told this in multiple studies."

She described the lack of public funding as a crisis of transparency and accountability.

The income of the board was Tk368.91cr in 2020-21FY, where the welfare fees and other fees were Tk116.52cr.

The expenditure that year was higher, coming in at Tk392.97cr. Among that, Tk51.59cr was spent on salaries and other maintenance costs, which was around 13% of the total expenditure.         

The board's annual report says that it had expenditures of around Tk1332.54cr in five years since FY2016-17 and income was Tk1586.39cr. 

"The WEWF has allocated more of its annual budget to operational expenses than to salaries, office management and other personal benefits… Although this pattern of spending may be justifiable, welfare funds should still assess whether such spending benefits migrants," an RMMRU report said.

Contacted, Shoyaeb Ahmed Khan, director, (finance and welfare), WEWB, could not give a clear idea about the total revenue of the company.

Md Jahid Anwar, deputy director, who served as focal point of the board, told TBS that the fund was around Tk1,000 crore a year ago.

Officials, however, say the fund has decreased in recent months, especially after Tk200cr was given from it to the Probashi Kallyan Bank for returnee migrant's reintegration loan. Besides, the money also provided for the migrants' quarantine fees and airfare. 

Meanwhile, WEWB is yet to publish its financial status in its annual report.

M Iqbal Hossain, former deputy comptroller and auditor general of Bangladesh told TBS, "The financial statement should be mentioned in the annual report of any government organisation.  According to the Wage Earners Welfare Board Act- 2018, there must be audit reports."

Around 1.26cr Bangladeshi have been employed abroad through legal channels since 1990 when the fund was created, according to the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training.       

Since its inception, the fund provides money to families of deceased workers, among other things.

From 1996-97 to 2020-21, a total of Tk1010.57cr was paid to 38,428 deceased migrants' families, according to the WEWB's last annual report.

The fund is also used to pay for bringing a deceased worker's body back home and to cover the cost of transporting and burying the body.

Since 1993 till 2021, the WEWF has spent Tk130.32cr for this.