Reducing migration cost

If low-cost and safe migration of workers from Bangladesh continues to elude, both the competence and remittance earning by the country will shrink. The two issues of low-cost and safe migration are inter-linked. Trained and skilled manpower is more likely to be in demand and such demands should minimise the cost. A seminar titled 'Citizens' responsibility to ensure low-cost and safe migration' held in the city on Sunday last delved deep into migration-related matters. Paradoxically, manpower agencies here and in the recruiting countries form an unholy alliance in order to maximise their profits. Their syndicates would rather deliberately look for unskilled and untrained workers ready to part with a stash of money because, if need be, they can be made sacrificial goats. To that end, local and foreign brokers are used to recruiting workers on vague job and wage agreements. The highest form of malpractice here is illegal visa trading. These malpractices are responsible for irregular and at times illegal recruitment in which the desperate migrant workers become the prime victims.

It is no secret that countries like Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, the destinations of the majority of Bangladeshi workers, launch deportation drives from time to time. All because of the manpower brokers in those countries as well as in Bangladesh. There is need for action against the syndicates operating in this country and the recruiting ones. The task is not difficult either. If the correspondence between sending agencies and the recruiting agencies are critically checked, the abuse of legal provisions will get exposed. If the deliberate preferences for unskilled workers, vague terms of reference in recruitment and wages are detected, there is no bar to busting the syndicates once for all. This exactly is the need of the time. To accomplish this job, the governments on both sides should approach the matter in a coordinated manner. There are even harrowing stories of torture on job-seekers made captive in forests or remote locations in recruiting countries by Bangladeshi extortionists and their foreign counterparts in order get more money.

All this points to the fact that there is no alternative to bringing the entire gamut of manpower export under strict supervision. This warrants streamlining the issue for the purpose. Only those who qualify for recruitment will be sent. Those who are eager to go abroad with jobs must learn the trade in their respective occupation and then should have the ability to qualify for a reasonable course of language proficiency. In this regard, English will be irrelevant. Rather, workers willing to work in the Middle East will be better off if they learn Arabic well.

With digitisation taking over, unskilled workers will find themselves unwanted everywhere. So the workers will have to get some useful education in order to handle their personal matters. Backed by their training and skill, they will raise their efficiencies to a level where they cannot be turned down from work places. Their education will help them not to get cheated easily. The kind of general education now imparted at schools in the country will not do. Emphasis on technical skill development will be of help.