Manpower export likely to reach record high this year

The country is likely to going to set a new record of manpower export in 2022 as a total of 6, 15, 518 Bangladeshi workers has gone abroad in the first six months till June 30, according to the data of Bureau of Manpower Export and Training (BMET).

The number was only 2, 43, and 807 during the same period of the previous year.

A total of 10, 08, 525 people went abroad in 2017, the highest in a single year of the Bangladesh’s manpower export history.

The second highest worker sending year was 2008 when some 8, 75, 055 people went abroad as workers.

In the first half of this year, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia received 385, 595 Bangladeshi workers which was the highest among the receiving countries followed by Oman that received 83, 764 workers, United Arab Emirates 65, 351, Singapore 29, 093 and Qatar 10,199.

The highest number of workers went abroad in March this year. Some 120, 319 Bangladeshi workers went abroad in March followed by 111, 539 in June, 109, 698 in January, 103, 975 in April, 92, 569 in February and 77, 421 in May.

Middle Eastern countries now need more workers due to oil price hike and to restore their economies after recovering from Covid-19, CR Abrar, a professor of International Relations at the University of Dhaka, told The Business Post.

There is a demand for workers abroad and so ‘we should stress the need for good working condition and minimum migration cost’.

“We should not hurry to send workers to Malaysia through selected number of recruiting agencies that raises migration cost. If we wait and do bargain with Malaysia, we would be able to break the syndicate and minimize the migration cost as there is a huge demand for workers in that country,” Abrar, also the Executive Director of the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU), said.

Shameem Ahmed Chowdhury Noman, former secretary general of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BIRA), said about 1 lakh people had gone abroad as workers over the last eight months.

The UAE market is now open for Bangladeshis. They were sourcing from Bangladesh by issuing visitor visa earlier. Now they have been issuing employment visa for the last five months resulting in manpower export boom, Noman said.

He expected that this calendar year might break all the records of manpower export in a single year if the flow continued.

In this regard, Malaysia is a very important country for Bangladesh to send workers there in record number if syndication of recruiting agencies can be dismantled.

There will be no problem to send 10-12 lakh workers every year to three countries - Saudi Arabia, UAE and Malaysia, Noman said.