What makes a well-accomplished, multitalented person, with interests spanning pharmacy, medicine, marketing and cricket, embark on an uncertain voyage from Bangladesh somewhere in Europe?

For Bapi, life has been comfortably predictable. An excellent student, he completed his bachelor's in pharmacy with honors, then switched to medicine, tending to his interests in Marketing with a master's degree, while successfully playing cricket throughout his studies. He fell in love with a fellow student, and they managed their studies, marriage, and careers with ease and hopefulness of young hearts.

Life seemed to be opening a different chapter, as a multinational pharmaceutical company he was climbing the promotional leader at, closed its operations due to changes in Bangladesh’ tax regime. Meanwhile, their family grew by two members, COVID-19 pandemic happened, and Bapi needed to find a way to support them. The family moved back to their village of Chapai Nawabgonij where he opened a small local pharmaceutical store.

Bapi wished for a more secure future for his two daughters somewhere in Europe. In addition, his big dream to play cricket for the national team vanished due to an enormous payment he would have needed to make just as a mere “entrance ticket” into the cricket club, despite his outstanding results.

That is when he found out through a cousin about an employment intermediary with job offers in Europe. The agency promised a decent, supervisory job at a furniture factory in Kosovo* and that after a year, he would be able to bring his family and obtain papers to travel freely across Europe, perhaps taking a shot in Spain, his dream destination, where his cousin also has settled.

“I arrived in Kosovo* just to find out that there was no furniture factory. The agency cheated me into a hard construction work”, Bapi says, remembering the horror when he learnt that the contract and the work permit were actually fake.

From then on, his labor migration voyage has become even more dangerous and highly risky.

With several irregular crossing, first off from Kosovo* to central Serbia, then to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, Bapi was finally sent back to Serbia. During this perilous route, he met four other migrants manipulated by the same agency. His passport was torn, he was threatened with a knife, his mobile phone taken away from him.

It is in one of the temporary reception centers in Sarajevo Canton where he saw the IOM AVRR poster that the thought of returning safely to his daughters entered his mind and has not left it since.

“The older daughter is my right side, while the younger is my left side”, says Bapi and adds:

 “I only feel whole when with them.”

Despite the perils and hardships endured, Bapi never felt despair. Once in the Asylum Centers of Tutin and Krnjaca in Serbia, he posted on social media about the fraudulent employment intermediary, warning many people against their manipulative services. He even managed to set in motion legal actions for filing a lawsuit against them in Bangladesh.  

Bapi’s entrepreneurial spirit has not left him, so he is already planning to reopen the pharmacy, or perhaps step into the farming business with his spouse, who is an agricultural engineer.

As the day of return to Bangladesh via IOM AVRR program approached, people from the two asylum centers in Serbia started to miss him, since he was selflessly helping others, painting the centers, and participating in all the activities, always smiling and emanating good energy and hope.

To his peers and other people on the move, Bapi has a strong message:

“We all have dreams. And no one should ever play with people’s dreams!”

IOM is enabling efficient, innovative and responsive channels for regular migration through the establishment, enhancement and expanding regular migration pathways with the particular focus on labour mobility including cooperation with Countries of Origin, Bangladesh included.

In the line with Global Compact for Migration, IOM strengthens national system to respond to and facilitates safe, dignified and the rights-based return, readmission and sustainable reintegration of migrants into their countries of origin or third countries.