Canada may hire agricultural workers first time from Bangladesh
Malaysia has started regularising three lakh undocumented Bangladeshi workers and will hire more on completion of their regularisation, Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain has said.
The workers remained undocumented since they were employed through “underhand dealings” that involved some Bangladeshi private recruitment agencies, the minister told journalists at Shahjalal International Airport on his return home yesterday after a two-week visit to Mexico, Canada and Switzerland.
“We have excellent bilateral relations with Malaysia. It is a gesture of goodwill that Malaysia is absorbing the undocumented workers in its economy,” Mosharraf said.
“They are not being arrested or harassed. Malaysia is gradually regularising them. Once they are regularised, Malaysia will hire more workers from Bangladesh,” he said.
Mosharraf, also minister for labour and employment, said some private recruitment agencies sent there more workers than what was required.
“About 120 workers were hired for a company which actually needed only 20.”
He said Canada has agreed in principle to hire agricultural workers from Bangladesh for short terms. Negotiations on the matter would be done during the Bangladesh visit of the premier of Canada’s Saskatchewan province in January next year.
The minister travelled to Mexico on November 8 to attend a conference of Global Forum for Migration and Development (GFMD).
He went to Canada from there on 12 November and met Bangladeshi expatriates and apparel buyers. Mosharraf also attended a meeting of the ILO governing body in Geneva.
Malaysia, hosting some five lakh Bangladeshis, stopped hiring Bangladeshi workers in March last year for anomalies in recruitment process.
Referring to his visit to Canada, the minister said Canada’s Saskatchewan Province needs many workers for its farms. It usually recruits labourers from the Caribbean countries but now it wants to hire workers from Bangladesh.
He said Bangladesh and Canada would establish an institute to train the workers who would migrate to the province. The minister did not mention the required number of workers.
Mosharraf said the governments of the two countries would handle the recruitment process. The issues of salary and facilities for the workers would be settled during the province premier’s visit to Bangladesh in January.
On his meeting with apparel buyers in Canada, he said the buyers are happy with present wage structure for garment workers in Bangladesh. The misunderstandings that arose from the labour unrest in Bangladesh’s garment sector are over now.
About the GFMD conference, he said representatives from 140 countries gathered in Mexico and discussed how migrants help both the source country and the employer nation.
The participants put emphasis on ensuring the rights of migrant workers and decent working conditions, he said.
“It was a meeting to create awareness. No agreement was signed there,” said the minister.
