The overseas employment of Bangladeshi workers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has virtually come to a halt during the last couple of months. Sources said Dhaka requested Riyadh to recruit workers from Bangladesh through a data bank prepared by the government instead of through private recruiters, who have been carrying out brisk business on demand notes of workers.
When workers go to private recruiters, the cost of emigration goes up, forcing many workers to change their occupations, and their status becomes illegal. Around three lakh Bangladeshis were found undocumented in the KSA during a drive by the Saudi authorities recently. The KSA launched a process to legalise those workers, which is still going on.
However, following the request, the Bangladesh embassy in Riyadh has stopped attesting demand notes for hiring fresh workers from Bangladesh. The demand notes are normally obtained by the private recruiters for sending workers to the KSA. As a result, the entry of fresh Bangladeshi workers to the KSA has declined significantly in the last couple of months.
In the first six months of the current year, only 10,000 workers went to the KSA for getting jobs, most of whom went there against individual visas, according to sources. Earlier, several lakh Bangladeshis used to go to the KSA in a single year.
The minister for expatriate welfare and overseas employment, Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, however, expressed his hope that 20,000 new workers would go to Saudi Arabia by December this year.
About the Bangladesh embassy stopping attestation of visas, the minister said, “The attestation did not stop, but we are no longer allowing any trading on workers’ visas by private recruiters.”
He said the embassy would attest the workers’ visas if they are selected from the data bank prepared by the government. There are around 14 lakh workers enlisted in the data bank, with their names, addresses and other related information. The private recruiters send workers, collecting them through their own channels, without following any system.
The minister alleged that the job market in the KSA has been systematically damaged by unscrupulous recruiting agents. Private recruiters charge Tk. 5 to 10 lakh for sending each worker to the KSA while one can go there by spending only Tk. 20,000, he said.
The private recruiters, however, alleged that fresh overseas employment of workers in the KSA stopped following Dhaka’s proposal to Riyadh to introduce the G-to-G (government-to-government) system for sending workers there.
The G-to-G system did not produce good results when workers were sent to Malaysia and it would also not be feasible for the KSA, they pointed out.
Following the proposal, the Bangladesh embassy in Riyadh stopped attesting any
demand note obtained by the private recruiters. “This attestation system does not exist in any country in the world as far as migration of workers is concerned,” claimed Shahjalal Mazumder, the president of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agents (BAIRA), the main platform of private recruiters.
According to the existing system, an employer of the KSA issues a demand note of workers, expressing intention of hiring workers from abroad. The private recruiters first obtain such demand notes and submit them to the Bangladesh embassy in Riyadh. After the embassy attests the notes, the Saudi embassy in Bangladesh issues visas to those workers. Only then can a worker from Bangladesh enter the kingdom and stay for the number of days stipulated in the visa.
The private recruiters also alleged that the government has selected a group of only 10 recruiting agents for sending workers to the KSA. On the other hand, BAIRA has 1,200 members, most of which send workers to the KSA.
The government officials claimed that the cost of emigration would decline significantly once the new system is introduced. The flow of workers going abroad would also increase after a proper system is established.
The total employment from the country has fallen drastically in the first six months of the current year. Only 2.08 lakh Bangladeshis went abroad from January to June this year, against 3.74 lakh during the same period last year — a fall of 45 per cent.
-With The Independent input
