The cabinet on Monday approved the crucial ‘Overseas Employment and Migrant Workers Bill, 2013′ incorporating the highest 10 years rigorous imprisonment and fine of TK 500,000 for violation of immigration law. The draft law also proposed seven years rigorous imprisonment and fine of Tk 300,000 for any forgery of the demand letter, visa and work permit.The proposed new law will replace the existing ‘Immigration Ordinance 1982′ for recruiting agencies to check forgery, deception and illegal practice to protect the interests of the overseas job seekers and migrants and their welfare.
The Overseas Employment ministry placed the draft law on April 15 last and the cabinet sent it to the Law Ministry for vetting with some observations.
After vetting, the Law Ministry sent the draft law again for final approval.
In case of publishing of any fake advertisement, the law proposed seven years rigorous imprisonment and fine of Tk 300,000.
The previous law that was enacted in 1982 had the provision of maximum one year imprisonment and highest Tk 5,000 fine for all types of rules violation.
After the meeting Cabinet Secretary M Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan told the reporters that the cabinet had given final approval to a tougher law to make the activities of the overseas recruiting agencies transparent, ensure their accountability and protecting the rights and interests of the migrant workers.
The proposed law has provision of filing case by an aggrieved person against the recruiting agency in the court. It also has specific guideline about the procedure of filing cases, acceptability of the cases, bail and compensation, he said.
It may be mentioned that manpower exporters earlier demanded to modify the draft saying that fraudulent recruiting agents should not be held solely responsible for migration related crimes.
Officials of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agency (BAIRA) recently told the media that they had no objection to punishing the cheating recruiting agencies but all stakeholders including migrant workers, ministry officials, embassies and immigration officials would have to be brought to book for their faults.
The cabinet also approved a work plan conceptualizing the perspectives of Bangladesh to execute the Istanbul Programme of Action adopted in the Forth UN Conference on LDCs to enable the country to graduate and come out from the group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
-With The Independent input
