Several months back unskilled and semi-skilled workers in their thousands made long queues before the rural IT (Information Technology) centres and got their names registered with a hope of getting jobs abroad.
The government put up advertisements in newspapers to this effect for such registration following proposals made by some foreign governments to recruit Bangladeshi workers.
In fact a high expectation was created among young workforce in rural areas by the official move despite the fact they were aware that registration did not anyway guarantee jobs abroad.
However, the end result of such registration has turned out to be highly disappointing. According to a report published in the Financial Express last Sunday, only around 1000 people from the database of hundreds of thousands of people could be sent abroad with jobs until now.
The large gap between expectation and outcome, however, has been very much in line with the overall achievements in manpower sector during the outgoing calendar year --2013.
The outflow of manpower and the inward remittances during 2013 was relatively low over those in the previous year.
According to a study prepared by the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU), a total of 403,793 Bangladeshis went abroad taking employment until December 24 last of 2013 compared to that of 607,798 in 2012. The highest number of migration of Bangladeshi workers --800,000 -- was in 2008. The outflow of manpower declined in 2009 when a global recession, the worst one since 1930, struck the entire world. But the situation largely improved in 2011 and 2012.
The migrant Bangladeshi workers sent home remittances worth US$13.47 billion until December 20 this year (2013). The trend indicates that the total annual inward remittance will be marginally lower in 2013 than that of the previous year. The ongoing political unrest is affecting the outflow of manpower. But the problem appears to be short-lived and transient in nature.
But given the prevailing economic situation, an important factor that influences decisions on the size of migrant-worker intake by any country, in the major destinations of Bangladesh workers, the statistics about recruitment and remittance earning should have been soothing to the ear.
Despite a number of high-profile visits to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and diplomatic overtures shown to a couple of Gulf nations, which have virtually stopped recruitment of workers from Bangladesh, in recent years the situation has not improved on the ground. Rather many illegal Bangladeshi workers in the KSA and the UAE had to return home from these countries because of police actions against illegal migrant workers.
Yet the decline in outflow of manpower to the major Middle-eastern destinations could be well compensated had the government taken a pragmatic approach in sending manpower to Malaysia and some non-traditional destinations.
The Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) has blamed the government's preference for government-to-government arrangement in sending manpower to foreign countries bypassing the private recruiters for the lacklustre performance in the manpower recruitment in 2013.
The manpower ministry appears to be very hostile to private recruiters for their alleged fraudulent activities that cause untold sufferings, both physical and economic, to the migrant jobseekers most of whom come from poor rural families. Incidents of jobseekers' death in foreign land in extreme conditions due to fraudulent activities indulged in by the private recruiters are galore.
But the decision to bypass the private recruiters in sending manpower to particular new destinations does not appear to be prudent one. The exclusion of the operators, who have the much-needed expertise in manpower recruitment, is bound to produce disappointing results. In fact the statistics relevant to manpower sector for the current calendar year, to a great extent, highlight the outcome of the decision of bypassing the private recruiters.
The government's indifference to the growing incidence of fraudulence in manpower sector over the years, in fact, has emboldened a few private recruiters to indulge in criminal offence like cheating the poor job seekers. Had the government adopted a suitable law on migration like the one it has passed recently and enforced it rigorously, private recruiters could not have easily cheated the people willing to take up jobs abroad.
The policymakers do need to keep in mind the fact that bureaucrats in this part of the world are bad managers. That is why most state-owned entities, industrial as well as commercial, are perennially loss-making and together they are a huge burden on the country's economy. So, it is most likely that government officials concerned would fail to show the much-needed aggressiveness and efficiency in manpower export the way the private recruiters demonstrate in their business.
While taking action against the dishonest recruiting agencies in accordance with the new migration act, the government should, side by side, allow the private recruiters to play their part in manpower export.
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