economy has been growing at over six percent annually, one-quarter of its people still live below the poverty line and the country is regularly struck by tropical cyclones and flooding.
“People from the poor rural areas where natural disasters have struck or the crop farming is no longer profitable are desperately trying to seek better opportunities abroad,” said Tasneem Siddiqui, who heads a Bangladeshi think tank on migration issues.
Bangladesh’s men have traditionally flocked to the Gulf and other regions, working in construction and other menial labour to send cash to their families back home.
The country of 160 million people has long suffered from endemic corruption and political turmoil, and relies on these multi-billion-dollar remittances to prop up its economy.
But the top three employers of Bangladeshi migrants — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia — drastically cut intakes in recent years after their job markets dried up.
Government figures show 875,055 Bangladeshis worked overseas in 2008, most of them in the Gulf. But that figure halved in recent years, with only 425,684 migrants in total in 2014, and female maids are now in higher demand than labourers.
Malaysia had been a favoured destination for Bangladeshis, many of whom worked on plantations, with wages higher than in the Gulf.
But Malaysia halted the influx of workers in 2007 amid concerns about crime and illegal immigration via unscrupulous recruitment agents. The hiring resumed in 2013, but only 5,134 were granted entry last year.
A UN official, who has worked with boatpeople in the region for years, said Bangladeshis first started to leave in boats for Southeast Asia in small numbers around 2005.
“Since then the traffickers’ network has become stronger and spread into the entire country. It has become one of the most profitable forms of organised crimes,” the official said, declining to be named.
Many fishermen in Cox’s Bazar — where the smuggling rings are based — have joined the business. There is more money to be made that way than from catching fish.
“This is a multi-million-dollar industry with the involvement of gangs from Bangladesh, Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia,” Tofail Ahmed, a senior anti-trafficking police officer, said.
At Dariardighi, a village of 3,000 farm labourers 30 kilometres north of Leda, about 200 young men have left on rickety boats in the past four years, according to a local council chief.
For Abdur Rahim, 21, who was persuaded by his cousin to leave in 2013, the journey ended in disaster.