The country’s overseas employment has registered a sharp decline this year, compared to last year. In the first half of the current year, the number of people going abroad, for work, declined by 45 per cent, compared to the figure of the corresponding period last year. The total number of people going abroad for jobs was 1.66 lakh less in the first six months this year, than the number during the same period last year, according to the Bureau of Manpower Export and Training (BMET), the lone government agency which monitors overseas employment-related issues.
The latest data released by BMET noted that a total of 2.08 lakh Bangladeshis went abroad for jobs, from January to June. The number was 3.74 lakh during the same period last year.
Manpower exporters are blaming the government’s policies for the sharp decline in overseas employment. “Manpower exports fell drastically because of the government’s wrong policy,” complained Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) president Shahjalal Mozumder. BAIRA is the main platform of private recruiting agencies.
He said the government wants to export manpower through the G-to-G (government-to-government) system, which is not feasible. He added that this system does not work anywhere in the world.
On the other hand, Engineer Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, minister for expatriate welfare and overseas employment, blamed the illegal practises and visa business of the private recruiting agencies, for damaging the overseas employment market for Bangladeshi workers.
Thousands of Bangladeshis have become illegal in a number of countries, as they were sent by private recruiting agencies, through unofficial channels, he told The Independent.
Giving examples, he said, around 3 lakh Bangladeshis in Saudi Arabia, and 2.67 lakh in Malaysia, have been deemed illegal recently. As a result, those countries have stopped hiring workers from Bangladesh, he pointed out.
The minister said the government wants to introduce a system so that people can go abroad at the lowest cost. Asked whether he is worried about the declining trend in manpower exports, the minister said, “I am not worried at all, because I think the flow will increase, once the system is introduced.”
Hossain claimed that under the new system, a worker would be able to go abroad, by spending an amount which is not more than an amount equivalent to his/her two months’ salary.
According to him, a worker can go to Saudi Arabia by spending only Tk. 20,000. In contrast, private recruiters charge Tk. 7 lakh to Tk. 10 lakh for a job in the oil-rich country, even when the worker gets only Tk. 10,000 as salary per month, he observed.
The BAIRA president alleged that the G-to-G system has not succeeded, and the number of manpower exports has started declining. He alleged that the government has missed the opportunity to send 10 lakh workers to Malaysia, by introducing the G-to-G system. Only 198 workers could go to Malaysia, though the market was opened up several months ago.
According to him, overseas employment would decline further in the near future, if the government does not change its policies. Private manpower exporters pointed out that the flow of overseas employment has shrunk, as several countries have either stopped recruiting manpower from Bangladesh, or have been following stringent policies. For example, though the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) officially did not stop recruitment of manpower from Bangladesh, it is following such a strict policy that only 10,000 workers got employment in the first six months of this year. Earlier, several lakh Bangladeshis used to go to KSA, every year, for jobs.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), a major job market for Bangladeshis, has also drastically reduced the recruitment of workers from Bangladesh. The country hired only 5,713 workers from Bangladesh, in the first six months of this year, against a recruitment of 1.68 lakh during the same period last year.
In the January-June period this year, the highest number of people got employment in Oman in the Middle East. A total of 70,858 Bangladeshis found jobs in Oman in the first half of this year. The country which recruited the second highest number of Bangladeshi workers is Singapore, which hired 30,221, followed by Qatar, which recruited 27,799 Bangladeshis.
The expatriates minister expressed his hope that the total manpower exports from the country would reach at least 4.50 lakh at the end of this year. In the year 2012, a total of 6.07 lakh Bangladeshis left the country, to take up jobs in 20 countries across the world.
-With The Independent input
