Diplomatic drive on to expand manpower markets in Europe

---

A Z M Anas
Bangladesh has beefed up diplomatic drive to expand manpower markets in East Europe as recession-hit traditional destinations scale back hiring Bangladeshi workers, officials said Tuesday.
As part of the move, they said, the country has focussed on new members of the European Union including Romania and Poland to export skilled and semi-skilled workforce there to help offset slowing manpower exports to the Gulf and Southeast Asian regions.
Bangladesh's overseas job markets remain extremely limited, with the majority of workers going to the oil-rich Middle Eastern countries and Southeast Asia's Singapore and Malaysia. Together, these markets absorbed more than 95 per cent of the country's labour force employed overseas last year.
But the global economic crisis has forced these nations to put on hold multi-billion-dollar construction projects, crimping demand for Bangladeshi workers.
"We'll visit Romania in mid-May. It's a hugely potential market," Elias Ahmed, expatriate welfare and overseas employment secretary, said.
"The main purpose of our visit is to explore future prospects. Still, people are working there and finding jobs. So obviously, expansion of the markets is another objective we are pursuing," Mr Ahmed told The Financial Express in an interview.
A high-powered delegation led by the Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment secretary will leave Dhaka for Romania next month to negotiate with the East European nation to boost manpower exports, officials said.
The diplomatic move coincides with the increasing shift of production facilities to newer EU members by richer members of the regional bloc. The companies do so to capitalise on cheap labour and new-found opportunities.
Mr Ahmed said Romania can employ Bangladeshi workers in its textiles, agriculture and construction sectors in a large scale.
He noted that the government was trying to facilitate manpower exports by private recruiters by establishing a legal framework based on diplomatic relations.
"Already, people with jobs are going there. We want to explore the potential more vigorously," he said.
Last year nearly 1500 Bangladeshi workers found jobs in Romania, sent by three private recruiting agencies, according to figures available with the Manpower Bureau.
The renewed move comes at a time when Bangladesh's traditional overseas job markets are threatened to founder. Already, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia almost stopped recruiting Bangladeshi workers while manpower exports to UAE's Dubai slowed down sharply in recent months.
In addition to Romania, officials said, other Eastern European nations such as Poland are increasingly recruiting Bangladeshi workers.
Officials said that the demand for pipe and gas welders was on the rise in Poland, the biggest contributor to the Eastern Europe's welding market.
An official at the state-run BOESEL (Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Services Limited) said that Polish companies took interviews of hundreds of Bangladeshi job-seekers in January and initially selected 54 pipe welders for recruitment.
The Polish economy has been booming since its joining the European Union.
Crushed by the global crisis, Bangladesh's traditional markets such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Malaysia have accelerated retrenching foreign workers.
Malaysia has already cancelled 55000 visas for potential Bangladeshi job-aspirants.
A record 875,000 overseas jobs last year helped Bangladesh to draw US$9.0 billion in workers' remittances, making those the second biggest source of foreign exchange flow after merchandise exports.
The UAE became the biggest employer of Bangladeshi workers last year, closely followed by Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.