Around 20,000 persons in the regular manpower, including 1293 foreigners, are working with national and international organizations and agencies in the Cox’s Bazar Rohingya Camps. A significant number of Rohingyas also work as regular staff and non-regular paid volunteers. However, no authority has any figure on them.
Investigation by Bangladesh Post revealed that as many as 12,000 Rohingyas are working with organizations, of them 5,000 in the education sector, and 3,000 in the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR. Other Rohingyas are working with International Organization of Migration IOM, Health, Food and protection sectors. In site management sector, dozens of Rohingyas are working as daily laborers everyday.
Traveling around the camps, one can see young Rohingya men and women working, with a few numbers of locals in Child Friendly Centers CFS and Learning centers, Food distribution centers, Medical centers and Information centers. Locals are complaining that for lack of any requirement policy, aid agencies are recruiting foreigners in top ranking posts with higher salaries, while the Rohingyas are also being recruited as regular staff for lower salaries.
There are a total of 120 domestic and foreign NGOs working in the Rohingya camp. There are 20 international NGOs and five local NGOs in Cox's Bazar. Others come from different parts of the country. Mohammad Shamsuddoza, Additional Commissioner of Refugee, Relief and Repatriation Commission in Cox’s Bazar said , “there are two categories of recruitment in camps for humanitarian works, one is regular staff, the figure is around 20,000, and the other is irregular and volunteers, but there is no figure as yet. All recruitment on temporary and project basis.”
“It’s mandatory that organizations recruit regular staff from foreigners and nationals as per their needs. Similarly, workers and volunteers are recruited from locals and Rohingyas,” he added.According to Special Branch of Cox’s Bazar police, among 1297 foreigners working in camps, around 300 are working for the UN organizations. ISCG a coordination group of the nine UN organizations, is providing humanitarian assistance in Cox’s Bazar.
Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, Co- Chair of CSO – NGO Forum in Cox’s Bazar and Chief Executive of Coast Trust, a local NGO said, “The UN agencies and INGOs going for employment of expatriates is a bit discriminatory, thus it is making the Rohingya issue response costly. Moreover these expatriates hardly have any knowledge in the local context. So it is creating tensions with and alienation from local communities.”
“There are some UN agencies and INGOs bringing logistics officers, security officers, accountants and secretaries from abroad. It seems to reflect that they hardly have trust in locals. Most of these expatriates take the major portion of their salary in accounts in their country of origin. For lack of any recruitment policy, the NGO’s are doing such unethical activities,” he added.
UNHCR and IOM and their local and international partners are key and focal organizations responsible for all those camps in Cox’s Bazar where over one million Rohingya live, in those 750 000 Rohingya arrive after 25 August 2017 following a brutal crackdown on Rohingya Muslim minority in northern Rakhain state of Myanmar.
The UN agencies and INGO don’t have any clear reply when asked about foreigner and Rohingya recruitments. When asked about their manpower, Louise Donovan, Communications Officer of UNHCR in Cox’s Bazar, did not reply, but only sent a data link of the UNHCR website.
In its website, the UNHCR mentions, “To acknowledge the crucial role played by the refugees in the response; with over 3,000 volunteers from the refugee community who are often the first responders on the ground.” George Mcleod, Information Officer of IOM said , “In Cox’s Bazar IOM has 1393 staff members and 1280 are Bangladeshi with 113 international staff on temporary contracts. IOM doesn’t sign employment contracts with Rohingya refugees; they are engaged as volunteers with some nominal payment on a rotation basis.”
“I don’t have those figures – volunteers help with basic tasks in the camps, said Mcleod, when asked how many Rohingyas were working with them?” In the education sector, at least two Rohingyas, who know Burmese and English, are working on a regular basis as teachers in each of the 2741 centers in the education sector, of which 2167 are run by the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF.
Abul Kashem, Local NGO Forum representative and Chief of Help Cox’s Bazar, a local Community Social Organization CSO in Ukhiya, where most camps are situated said, “The NGO employed Rohingyas at relatively low wages, so locals are not getting jobs with regular pay.”
