Confusions abound about the foreign nationals working in Bangladesh. No government agency has any clue about their actual number. While the Special Branch of Police guesstimates the number of foreign workers at around 0.4 million, the Board of Investment (BoI), the agency responsible for issuing work permits to foreigners, puts the number of legal foreign workers at a paltry figure of 12,000. However, a leading Indian tech magazine, the Siliconindia, has recently claimed that more than 0.5 million Indian nationals work in Bangladesh and they sent $ 3.71 billion home last year, meaning that the number of foreign workers could be 0.6 million or more.
There is no denying the need for recruitment of some foreign workers, particularly in areas where locals, having the requisite skill, technical or otherwise, are not available in adequate numbers. But their employment in jobs beyond that requirement, is bound to give rise to some unwelcome developments in a country like Bangladesh. This is particularly so because rate of unemployment and under-employment in the country is quite high - every third person here is either unemployed or under-employed. Besides, country's foreign exchange reserve is not that robust to sustain the burden of a substantial volume of outward remittance by a large pool of foreign workers. So, the country with its existing limitations can ill afford employment of a large number of foreign workers.
Going by the varying estimates of foreign workers, one has ample reasons to suspect the presence of a good number of illegal foreign workers in the country. This is possible mainly because of the lax monitoring and surveillance by the relevant government agencies. Usually, shipping firms, freight forwarding agents, clothing factories, textile mills, buying houses and information technology (IT) firms employ foreign workers. Looking into the documents of the foreign workers employed in these relevant fields of businesses should not be a big ask. In fact, all the confusions over the number of legal or illegal foreign workers have developed because none of the relevant agencies has been discharging properly their respective functional duties and responsibilities.
But such a dereliction of duty is depriving the unemployed local youths, though on a limited scale, of job opportunities. This is also draining out the hard-earned foreign exchange a large part of which is earned by nearly 7.0 million Bangladeshi expatriate workers at the cost of their sweat and blood. Moreover, the authorities are not aware of the actual amount being remitted home by the foreign workers. They get an idea about the sum remitted by the legal workers through the banking channel but not about the amount sent by the illegal workers since the latter do obviously use illegal routes or 'hundis' for the purpose. Allegations have it that the actual compensation packages of the legal workers are more than what are shown in their formal letters of appointment. The difference is reportedly maintained with a view to evading tax.
The government, according to a report published in this paper, has initiated a move to compile a comprehensive data-base of foreigners working with different commercial and industrial establishments. There were similar moves in the past also. But, for reasons best known to the authorities concerned, the initiatives could produce hardly anything of substantive nature, in the end. Hopefully, the authorities would not repeat the past mistakes. Side by side, a forceful and serious drive should be launched to identify illegal foreign workers and they should be asked to leave the country within a reasonable period of time. The country often faces humiliation through 'deportation' or 'push-back' of its genuine or fake nationals. It should not shy away from taking similar 'corrective' measures, if necessary.
The issue of foreign workers
FE Team | Published: February 27, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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