Home ›› 22 Dec 2021 ›› Front
All valid recruiting agents listed in the database of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training will get a fair chance to send workers to Malaysia. The Malaysian agents will select their Bangladeshi counterparts to recruit manpower.
Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Imran Ahmad said this on Tuesday while addressing a press conference at his office.
Earlier on Sunday, Bangladesh and Malaysia signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to resume manpower export to the Southeast Asian country.
Imran said Malaysia is likely to receive manpower from January next year but he could not give any concrete information about the costs and the number of workers who can get jobs in there.
The Malaysian employers will bear all costs on their end including return airfare, healthcare, insurance, residence, workplace safety and compensations while the Bangladeshi workers will do their part here including the costs of passport, local transport, health checkup, welfare and BMET smart card fees and their agencies’ service charges.
In his address, Ahmed Munirus Saleheen, secretary to the Ministry of Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment, said the MoU has created a chance to send workers through an ideal framework.
“This will increase workers dignity and ensure their rights,” he said, adding that the terms and conditions of the MoU were set following the law of both countries.
Syed Saiful Haque, chairman, WARBE Development Foundation, a community-based migrants’ organisation in Bangladesh, told The Business Post that the government should make the MoU public for greater transparency in the labour migration process.
“It is still a question how the Malaysian agents will select their Bangladeshi counterparts and what their service charge will be,” he said.
Saiful congratulated the government for making efforts to open the labour market in Malaysia and called for steps to monitor the migrant workers’ situation strictly.
The expatriates welfare and overseas employment minister said he met Malaysian Home Minister Dato’ Seri Hamzah Bin Zainudin and discussed the issue of unauthorised Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia.
“We agreed to form a committee for regularising the undocumented workers in Malaysia and for ensuring their jobs,” he informed the reporters.
“Malaysia did not send any demand for workers yet, but we came to know that they will need 6-7 lakh workers including 20 lakh in plantation sector.”
With the MoU signing, Malaysia formally reopened its labour market for Bangladeshis after a suspension of over three years, Imran said, adding that the government is yet to set criteria, and therefore, taking money from any aspiring migrant beforehand labour is illegal.
According to BMET Director General Shahidul Alam, there are 1970 recruiting agencies on the list of BMET including some inactive agents.
“The exact number of recruiting agencies is near 1,500,” he said.
Last week in a media statement, the Malaysian government said recruitment of Bangladeshi workers would resume immediately in sectors such as plantations, agriculture, manufacturing, services, mining and quarrying, construction, and domestic work.
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 pandemic are now stranded here while several thousand undocumented workers are living in Malaysia.
The BMET statistics shows that 2,73,201 Bangladeshis were recruited by Malaysian employers in 2007. In September 2018, when Malaysia suspended recruitment, some 1,75,927 migrated there in the previous nine months before September.
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.
