Home ›› 28 Feb 2022 ›› Editorial
The visiting Malaysian Plantation, Industries, and Commodities Minister Datuk Majah Zuraida Binti Kamaruddin on Saturday made it clear that her government would not tolerate any syndication in manpower export from Bangladesh, who ensured fair competition among all recruiters of Bangladesh. She also said a zero-cost formula would be adopted in the process of manpower export from Bangladesh in diverse sectors, including plantation. Under this move, employers will bear all migration costs of workers. Moreover, the employers will pay service charges and processing fees to the recruiting agencies concerned in the process. The Malaysian minister announced while a delegation of former BAIRA (Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agency) leaders paid a courtesy call on her at a city hotel. The statement cleared the stance of her country against syndication and support for low-cost migration. Hundreds of thousands of aspirant workers in Bangladesh heaved a sigh of relief for the firm stance of Malaysia which earlier had favoured syndication of 25 recruiters only to repeat the past sad experiences in sending workers from Bangladesh to Malaysia through 10 handpicked recruiting agencies.
It is to be mentioned that from 2017 to 2018, Malaysia and the government signed an agreement, allowing only 10 manpower recruiting agencies, and finally, the Malaysian government withdrew from the agreement due to curtailing and corruption in the recruitment of workers. With the introduction of the new system, aspirant workers had hoped that exploitation, human trafficking, and charging exorbitant fees by recruitment agencies would no longer be in place. However, the outcome was horrifying and worst. The Malaysia- bound job-seekers were hardly benefited from that G2G agreement as recruiters did not obey the government’s instruction. The selected fortunate 10 recruiting agencies charged around Tk 300,000 to Tk 400,000 each for getting a job in Malaysia, ignoring the G2G plus arrangement of Tk 37,000 including airfare (one way) for a worker to Malaysia. At one stage, the Malaysian government had to scrap the system.
In Saturday’s meeting, Datuk Majah Zuraida Binti Kamaruddin expressed appreciation for the contribution of Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia’s plantation sector over several decades, adding that her country is eager to hire more workers from this country for the sector, which is dependent on Bangladeshi workers. According to the labour law of Malaysia and set by the government, each worker will get a monthly salary of 1,200 ringgit. Moreover, according to the guidelines of the International Labour Organization (ILO), workers will get accommodation, medical services, and other benefits. She clarified her position against any kind of syndication regarding immigration. Emphasising the importance of participation by all recruiting agencies in sending workers, she said that she does not support any kind of discriminatory policy towards government-approved agencies.
Dhaka and Kuala Lumpur signed an MoU in December last year, allowing all valid recruiters to send workers from Bangladesh to Malaysia. Bypassing the spirit of the memo, Malaysian Human Resource Minister M Saravanan in January asked Bangladesh to send workers only through 10 recruiters in contrast to the MoU. According to the provisions of C (V) and C (VI) of Appendix B of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), open competition among all licensed recruiters was mentioned. The shift in policy and disregard for the bilateral agreement sparked criticism in both countries. Transparency International also blamed the syndication conspiracy. Minister for Expatriates’ Welfare & Overseas Employment Imran Ahmad also urged his Malaysian counterpart to follow the agreement to make sure that no syndication exists.
With the latest stance from the Malaysian government on establishing a transparent and low-cost migration policy, the syndication conspiracy must see an end to their ill-motive. They want manpower syndication, they want medical test syndication, and who knows the vested group is not in their frantic search for another new avenue of business syndication? Their ill-motive must not be tolerated for the sake of our Malaysia-bound workers. Bangladesh government will not, for sure.
We appreciate the latest stance of the Malaysian government on establishing a transparent, open, and competitive process, and looking forward to seeing its implementation soon for mutual interest.
