A two-day intergovernmental and regional seminar on promoting cooperation for safe migration and decent work began in the capital on Monday to explore coordinated approach towards governance, protection and reintegration of migrant workers, officials said.
The seminar aims at serving a platform for exchanging good practices, between the countries of origins and destinations within a framework of international labour conventions and recommendations, they said.
The participants would also identify the possible regional and inter-regional solutions and mechanisms to support migrant workers, they said.
Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain inaugurated the seminar at a city hotel.
Expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment ministry in collaboration with International Labour Organisation and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation organised the seminar.
Representatives from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries, and some countries of destinations including Bahrain, Egypt, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Philippines, and Qatar were taking part in the seminar.
Addressing the function, Khandker Mosharraf Hossain said the government was seeking assistance to strengthen institutional capacity to govern migration, including the workers return and reintegration process.
‘We will find cooperation possible if we see migrant workers search for decent work as a human endeavour. This endeavour is beneficial to both the countries of origins and destinations,’ he said.
Realising importance of remittance and migrant workers, the government has enacted the emigration ordinance-1982 in order to streamline migration and diaspora issues, the minister said.
About 8.5 million
Bangladeshi workers are currently working in some 157 countries, he mentioned.
EWOE secretary Jafar Ahmed Khan told reporters that Bangladesh representatives in the seminar would present particularly the women migration issues and how their safety, protection and governance could be ensured.
‘We’ll also discuss how the irregularities in the migration process can be removed,’ he said, adding that the best migration practices to be discussed in the seminar would be adopted for Bangladeshi migrant workers.
-With New Age input
