First quarter overseas job growth slowest in 4 years

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Mashiur Rahaman
Overseas employment in the first quarter grew to its slowest pace in four years, as new work opportunities almost dried up in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, officials said Thursday.
The government said 99,140 Bangladeshis found jobs in the January-March first quarter, declining by 27.9 per cent than the same period last year, 56 per cent than 2008 and 22 per cent than 2007.
Officials of the Bureau of Manpower and Employment Training (BMET), which keeps the data of daily overseas employment, attributed the slide to massive fall in recruitment by the Persian Gulf countries, notably Saudi Arabia, and South East Asia.
"In the first three months, Saudi Arabia employed only 602 workers. In the past, the Muslim kingdom used to employ this number of workers in a day or two," said an official.
For some strange reasons, the Saudi authorities have been ignoring Bangladeshi workers since 2008, said a top recruiting agent, who said Riyadh now favours workers from Nepal and the Philippines.
In oil-rich Kuwait where the prime minister made an official visit in February, only 11 workers found jobs in the first three months while gas-rich Qatar employed less than 1000 labourers.
Job opportunities in the South East Asia dried up sharply despite the economies of regional powerhouses, Singapore and Malaysia, have come back strongly in the first quarter, snapping a year-long recession.
BMET data showed Malaysia, the third biggest employer of Bangladeshi workers after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), recruited only 44 workers between January and March.
Kuala Lumpur has imposed a total freeze on recruitment from Bangladesh, despite many assurances from its cabinet ministers. Calls from Dhaka to review the freeze have so far fallen on deaf ears.
"We have heard that Malaysian authorities have planned to recruit some 100,000 from Nepal. They are not interested in Bangladeshi workers despite the resurgence of their economy in recent months," said the recruiting agent.
The UAE remained the main destination of Bangladeshi workers in 2010 despite its companies were hit hard by the global economic recession - the worst since the Second World War
The grouping of seven Emirates hired more than 56,275 workers from Dhaka, making up nearly 60 per cent of total Bangladesh overseas jobs in the first three months.
Last year the UAE hired 258,348 labourers, accounting for 46 per cent of total Bangladeshi manpower export.
War-torn Iraq provided some hopes, employing 1441 workers while Singapore, Libya, Bahrain and the Indian island of Mauritius maintained a static pace in their recruitment.