EXPANDING MANPOWER EXPORT
Bangladesh missions need more resources, training: experts
Raheed Ejaz
The government needs to enhance the capacity of the labour wings abroad by taking steps including allotting more resources and holding proper training for the officials there for boosting manpower export.
Officials, recruiting agents and experts also feel that the government should take measures for keeping the momentum of oversees job market as well as creating new destinations for getting more remittances.
‘As the country gets significant amount of money through remittances, the government must declare the overseas job market as the thrust sector, backed by adequate resource mobilisation and posting proper personnel in its overseas missions,’ CR Abrar, coordinator of the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, told New Age Friday.
He said the government needed to follow the best examples of other countries who explored new markets on their own.
Abrar said the Philippines kept its labour attachés at least one year in the homeland to equip them with the language, laws, market as well as other relevant issues of destination countries.
‘The way they [the Philippines authorities] train their officials, finally those people render best services for the country,’ said Abrar, also a professor of international affairs at Dhaka University.
Dwelling on exploration of new market, he said it was truly hard to grab new market but the approaches used by Sri Lanka and the Philippines should be eye-openers for us.
‘But the main thing has to be selecting proper people for the overseas missions and also equipping them with sufficient orientation before sending them on overseas assignments,’ he maintained.
Ghulam Mustafa, president of the Bangladesh Association for International Recruiting Agencies, categorically said that compared to the remittance inflow, the government’s allocation for overseas mission for welfare of workers and exploration of new markets was not sufficient at all.
He said, ‘A lot of things should be done, including providing more resources for the missions, developing their logistics and holding proper training for labour attachés abroad for the welfare of workers and finding new markets.’
Mustafa said the government should have a coordinated approach, with all ministries, including the foreign ministry, to streamline the overseas job market in the wake of global recession.
He said the country in 2007 got six billion US dollars by sending some 8,32,000 people, while the figures were $8.5 billion and 8,70,000 respectively in the previous year.
While his attention was drawn to the need for more resource allocation for the overseas missions, Abdul Matin Chowdhury, secretary to the expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment ministry, admitted that those missions need to get more money, especially to equip them in line with the changing digital world.
‘The government has certain limitations [in resource mobilisation], but I feel that if we get enough money it could help us improve the logistic support to our overseas missions,’ said the top official of the ministry.
Matin told New Age that the country needed to open up small labour wings at its missions in countries where Bangladesh had a potential of labour market.
He said, during the immediate past regime, the ministry proposed to have at least 77 officials in the overseas missions under the revenue budget, but the establishment ministry approved only 40 officials against the demand.
At present, the country has 12 labour attachés in its overseas missions, including those in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Kuwait, Qatar, Singapore, South Korea, and Libya.
Courtesy: newagebd.com
