Making migrant workers' recruitment easier

I was happy to read the article titled 'Ethical recruitment of migrant workers' that was first published in the Financial Express on December 1, 2018. The article has been re-published by The Migration Newsdesk, an everyday internal news bulletin aimed mainly for International Organisation for Migration (IOM) staff members across the globe.

Being a Bangladeshi and an international staffer engaged in the field of migration management, I was moved by this article.

Everyone is well aware of the bottlenecks existing at every stage and level of migrant workers' recruitment. These bottlenecks capitalise on migrants' vulnerabilities at different stages in different forms and at varied degrees both in the home country as well as in the countries of recruitment. This goes on despite legal instruments in place like Bali Process and Colombo Process as well as existence of rights-based organisations, media and civil society. The country now needs law-binding protocols and instruments for recruiting agencies.

I hope that the recent government move and based on the International Recruitment Integrity System (IRIS) of IOM will materialise and facilitate an ethical recruitment system for workers willing to go abroad.

I hope to read more such articles in FE in the days to come.

Ahsan Shahriar

Consultant/Interpreter

International Organisation for Migration

[email protected]