Home ›› 11 Dec 2021 ›› Front
The Malaysian government has agreed to reopen its labour market for Bangladeshi workers after a suspension of over three years.
The office of the Southeast Asian country’s human resources minister in a media statement on Friday said a cabinet meeting on the day had agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Bangladesh authorities for resuming workers’ recruitment.
The statement said Bangladeshi workers’ recruitment would resume immediately after the MoU was signed in the near future.
The meeting decided to recruit workers in all sectors, including plantations, agriculture, manufacturing, services, mining and quarrying, construction, and domestic work.
In October this year, the Malaysian authorities said they would hire overseas workers only for plantations. Malaysia is the second-highest palm oil producer in the world. It hires plantation workers for palm oil production.
According to Friday’s statement, the cabinet meeting also agreed to defer the implementation of the multi-tier levy system for employing foreign workers from January 1 next year to July 1 so as not to burden employers.
Bangladesh’s Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Md Imran Ahmad told The Business Post he hoped to complete all the formalities in this regard within this month and start sending workers from January.
“From our part, we will allow all agencies to send migrants, but the Malaysian authorities will also make a decision,” he said.
The authorities of the two countries have held multiple discussions on reopening the Malaysian labour market for Bangladeshi workers. Malaysia is one of the major labour markets for Bangladeshis after the Middle East.
Bangladesh’s Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Deputy Secretary Shaikh Muhammad Refat Ali told The Business Post Bangladesh had completed all the formalities to sign the highly-anticipated MoU with Malaysia.
He said the ministries concerned of both countries had worked together on this for the last couple of months.
Malaysia suspended hiring Bangladeshi workers in September 2018 over allegations of recruitment malpractices and high recruitment costs paid by Bangladeshis.
Officials said the Malaysian government had assured Bangladesh several times of reopening the labour market but failed because of political turmoil there.
In February, the then Malaysian human resources minister M Kula Segaran in a meeting with Imran Ahmad in Dhaka assured the latter of resuming Bangladeshi workers’ recruitment soon.
The two ministers agreed that in the interest of fair labour migration, a list of all legal recruiting agencies in Bangladesh would be sent to Malaysia. The Malaysian side would then select the appropriate number of agencies from the list.
It was also decided that the entire recruitment process would be monitored through an integrated online system, including the recruitment of staff from the database and fair service pricing through banking channels.
In early 2015, the governments of Bangladesh and Malaysia signed an MoU on worker recruitment through a government-to-government plus mechanism.
Over 10.5 lakh Bangladeshi workers have so far migrated to Malaysia. Besides, more than 20,000 workers who came to Bangladesh from Malaysia on vacation before the coronavirus pandemic are now stranded here.
At present, 2.2 million foreign workers are working in different sectors in Malaysia.
Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) data shows despite the recruitment suspension, 7.89 per cent of Bangladeshi migrants work in Malaysia at present.
Malaysia once was a preferred destination for Bangladeshi migrants due to better wages and comfortable job opportunities.
BMET statistics show 2,73,201 Bangladeshis were recruited by Malaysian employers in 2007. In 2018, when Malaysia suspended recruitment, 1,75,927 Bangladeshis migrated there in nine months.
Since then, Malaysia recruited only 688 Bangladeshis.
According to the latest Bangladesh Bank data, the inflow of remittance from Malaysia dropped to $290.86 million in the July-September period of 2021 against the inflow of $607.24 million in the corresponding period in 2020. The remittance inflow in 2019 was $1.19 billion from Malaysia to Bangladesh.
