Home ›› 26 May 2022 ›› Front
Discussants – at a pro-syndicate meeting on capturing the big Malaysian labour market – voiced their strong objections against such syndication, frustrating the organisers who are also the mastermind behind the ill motive.
Most of the panelists and recruiters, participating in the open meeting at a city hotel on Tuesday, expressed their support for an open market formula for sending labourers from Bangladesh to Malaysia.
They said if only 25 recruiters are allowed to send labourers, the entire process would face a bottleneck and escalate costs for aspirant migrants.
Anisul Islam Mahmud, the chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment, was the chief guest at the meeting.
Anisul voiced his support for open market competition among valid recruiters for manpower export to Malaysia, and opposed any move towards syndication for the sake of aspirant migrants, economy, and depleting forex reserve.
He made the call while addressing the view exchange meeting titled “Ways to Increase Foreign Employment and Opening the Closed Labour Market,” organised by BAIRA United Democratic Alliance at Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka on Tuesday.
The organisers of the meeting are blamed for plotting a syndication conspiracy over grabbing the Malaysian labour market consisting of only 25 recruiters.
Anisul then said, “What I want to say is that the market needs to be open. Now the question is will it be through a selected number of recruiting agencies or through open competition?
“One speaker after another here, if you take the record, spoke against the syndication. Not about what is going to happen in future, but about the past syndicate. And you have personally accused some individuals of this syndication.”
He added, “What I want to say today is what is being asked by Malaysia, why have they gone for this limited number of recruiting agencies? Our honourable minister, till now, has been opposing it. And I support him.”
Anisul said, “In Malaysia’s rubber plantations, their harvests are getting spoiled. Palm oil – their main export – is getting wasted for a lack of workers. Malaysia needs workers in every sector. And as per my estimate, we can export a handful of manpower to Malaysia.”
Calling upon for a united platform among manpower recruiters, Anisul said recruiters will become weaker if division existed. He urged all quarters concerned to look into the faulty system. Mahathir Mohammad had put an end to syndication to stop irregularity in the process, he added.
“Why did he [Mahathir Mohamad] stop it? It was because of the corruption that took place then. And we don’t want the same corruption to happen again whether it is from the Bangladesh side, or Malaysian side,” Anisul pointed out.
“If they [Malaysia] want to enforce a corrupt system, we will stand against this. Let us not allow this to happen. Let us find out that what we need today is to understand that Malaysia will look after its own interests and they have their mechanism. We need to look into our interests.”
He said there’s no reason to ruin the Malaysian labour market by dividing among recruiters.
Reiterating transparency and fairness, Anisul said the country must focus on four things regarding sending our people abroad. They are low cost, safe migration, fair wages and the environment for migrants.
Former BAIRA leaders Mohammad Shafiqul Alam, Shahadat Hossain, Mansur Alam, Benazir Ahmad, and Ruhul Amin spoke on the occasion among others.
