Home ›› 19 Dec 2021 ›› World Biz
Bangladesh and Malaysia on Sunday signed a memorandum of understanding to initiate manpower export facilities to the Southeast Asian country.
With the MoU signing, Malaysia formally reopened its labour market for Bangladeshi workers after a suspension of over three years.
Bangladesh Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Imran Ahmad and Malaysian Minister for Human Resources M Saravanan signed the memorandum on behalf of the respective countries.
Earlier, a delegation led by Minister Imran Ahmad reached Malaysia for the purpose around 5:00am.
At a press briefing in Dhaka on Friday, without disclosing the terms and conditions of the MoU, Imran said the ministry would see to it that the migration cost is lower than the previous years.
“We will not leave a scope for syndication,” he said, adding, “We will keep the door open for all. From our side, all legible agencies will get the opportunity, but Malaysia will make its own decision in this regard.”
Last week in a media statement, the Malaysian government said the country has agreed to sign a MoU with the Bangladesh authorities for resuming workers’ recruitment.
The statement said Bangladeshi workers’ recruitment would resume immediately after a MoU is signed between the nations, 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 coronavirus pandemic are now stranded here.
According to the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) data, despite the recruitment suspension, 7.89 per cent of the total Bangladeshi migrants currently work in Malaysia.
The bureau statistics show 2,73,201 Bangladeshis were recruited by Malaysian employers in 2007. In September 2018, when Malaysia suspended recruitment, 1,75,927 Bangladeshis had migrated there in the previous 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.
