Home ›› 03 Jan 2022 ›› Editorial
The direct contributions of remittances to the national income have grown rapidly in the recent years. Remittance has already changed many people’s livelihoods and boosted our economic growth and is the second largest financial inflow to our country. Indeed, money sent by immigrants increase the income of their families but overall, they help the country to grow. Bangladesh relies heavily on foreign remittances where it contributes a lot to maintain foreign exchange reserves. The surge in remittances can reduce the dependency on conditional costly foreign borrowing. And it also plays a vital role in bringing sustainability to the current account balance.
However, the fact remains that the majority of Bangladeshi migrant workers are semi-skilled and unskilled. They are mainly involved in low-end jobs. Bangladesh ranks sixth among migrant origin countries, but is ninth among the top 10 remittance receiving nations, meaning that in spite of sending more workers abroad, Bangladesh earns less in remittance. The per capita remittance of Bangladeshi migrant workers is lower compared to the migrant workers of other countries like the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India and Nepal. Bangladesh’s major competitors in the overseas job markets including Sri Lanka and the Philippines have gained much from the skilled personnel they send overseas, according to data from different sources.
If the workers are provided training according to the demand of the recruiting countries and then sent abroad, the flow of remittance will obviously increase. To create newer avenues of overseas employment, migrant workers need diverse skill sets. Quality technical and vocational training can play significant roles in creating a highly skilled manpower. Collaboration of vocational training institutes with overseas employment promoters can help impart market-based training.
Semi-skilled workers include drivers, tailors and masons; and housemaids, cleaners and labourers are considered as unskilled workers. Men mainly work in the construction sector, cleaning, and maintenance work. Skilled people are always high in demand, so their salaries are always on the higher side. If the country sends more skilled and professional labours abroad, remittance inflows would increase at a fast clip. When people migrate only to specific job sectors, any economic slowdown of these sectors will cause to reduce remittance drastically. Also within a very short period, few specific countries’ specific job sectors will not require more labor. As a result, Bangladesh needs to diversify its migration to different job sectors. For this to happen technical training has to be provided to enhance the skill factor. This will be possible if we take the right steps to improve not only the quality of our formal education system but also associated skills. Experts believe that such development initiatives and vocational training need to be introduced from the secondary stage in the schools.
In the developed countries the demand for skilled migrant workers is likely to grow even further. In the highly competitive international market, industrially advanced countries will continue to import skilled and educated professionals to reduce costs and enhance productivity. Labour-importing countries save money on the high cost of skills training and education of professionals. Mobility of capital and the growth points it creates serve as a magnet for attracting foreign manpower. To take advantage of this situation Bangladesh needs to develop skilled human resources. Lack of language and communication skills is also hindering our professionals from flourishing in the overseas job market. When someone decides to go and work in a certain country, they should have the opportunity of learning the language of that country along with English. We should set up language institutes and introduce more language courses, especially the languages of the countries that most people choose to go to for work, to this end. It is essential that we include Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Afrikaan, and other languages so that aspirant overseas workers can have the opportunity in advance to learn the language of the country they wish to go to. It is a good sign that the ministry of expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment now provides English and Korean language training to people willing to work in South Korea. But this is not enough. More languages must be included.
There is a great need for acquiring skills to keep up with the demands of the changing world. Upskilling our migrant workers and equipping them with the knowhow to deal with a rapidly changing work environment will go a long way toward making them ready for the overseas workplace.
There are 71 technical training centres (TTCs) operating under the BMET (Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training), however, thousands of workers are going abroad without any training.
In Bangladesh there is lack of awareness about the importance of acquiring new skills; poor utilisation of existing training capacity, skills mismatch with the market demand, lack of upgrading the existing training centres and meagre attempt to creating and updating the training manuals developing and incorporating new materials. Bangladesh has to make a concentrated effort to increase the number of trained migrant workers in order to make the flow of remittance more sustainable.
Recruiting data on labour migration shows that small portions of labor are migrated through the government and most of the labors are migrating through individual efforts or by the recruiting agents. The government could increase its role in negotiations and intra country relationships. The state is a more powerful player than individual persons or recruiting agencies, especially when it comes to salary and opportunity negotiations. When people migrate individually or through recruiting companies, they may not have sufficient information and ability to negotiate properly with the actual authority or may not be able to get jobs that use their skills to the fullest. Sometimes people face middlemen who are fraudulent. The global media has depicted the plight of thousands of poverty-stricken people duped by middle-men have undertaken perilous voyages in ramshackle boats in a bid to enter different countries as illegal migrants. We have watched them being rescued from detention camps hidden in the coastal jungles bordering the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean.
Bangladesh also needs to diversify its overseas jobs markets through adoption of proper strategies such as expanding existing markets and designing aggressive programmess penetrating into other countries with aging problem and low population as well as policies to enter into emerging economies like Russia, China, South Africa and East European countries.
About one third of the nation’s population is between 18-34 years of age. To take advantage of demographic dividends, we need to provide them quality education and skills training. Keeping in mind the technological advancements, Bangladesh has to undertake new development strategies and put adequate resources to train and equip their workforce. The agencies concerned should formulate a skill development strategy for the country’s workforce.
The writer is a journalist and can be contacted at smmsagar48@gmail.com
