Fresh KL ban on manpower export to affect 1.0m local job-seekers

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Naim-Ul-Karim
A fresh ban imposed recently by the Malaysian government on manpower import from Bangladesh will affect over 1.0 million local job-seekers to be hired there, a senior government official said.
"For the time being, we won't be taking in Bangladeshi workers," a source quoted Malaysian home minister as saying.
The government official further said the Malaysian cabinet decided to freeze the intake of Bangladeshi workers with immediate effect as the process has caused problems to the country.
Against such a situation, sources said the Ministry of Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment (MEWOE) Thursday held a meeting with the country's 45 leading recruiting agencies in the city.
The meeting presided over by the secretary of MEWOE, Abdul Matin Chowdhury, directed the recruiting agencies to ensure that adequate paperworks and logistics of the 20,000 workers, whose jobs are in the pipeline, are readily available, an official who attended the meeting said.
He said during the meeting the manpower secretary termed the fresh ban as a temporary measure of the Malaysian government and assured the recruiting agencies that the government would make its move after the MEWOE Adviser, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, returns from New York.
A meeting source said that most of the recruiting agencies, who attended the meeting, accused a section of media for exaggerating their reports of the sufferings of workers in Malaysia.
An official source in the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), quoting the Malaysian home minister Datuk Seri Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad, said the presence of Bangladeshi agents who used Malaysians as sub-agents and large amounts of money involved are not a healthy sign and at the same time not good for the country.
Besides problems related to the agents, the Malaysian minister said, the workers themselves were causing many social woes.
Sources said Malaysia will hire around 2.6 million workers in the long term, of which around 50 per cent were to be recruited from Bangladesh after a 10-year deadlock was relaxed last year.
Malaysia froze the recruitment of Bangladeshi workers back in 1999, Datuk said, adding 100,000 more workers were expected to arrive the in the country from Bangladesh as their intake has been approved earlier.
Officials of some recruiting agencies alleged that the failure of the government to check some agencies involved in fraudulent activities was the major cause of the ban.
Malaysian government several times warned the Bangladesh government for taking tough steps against those quarters, they said.
When asked, an official of the BMET said they have already cancelled licence of 13 agencies.
"We are contemplating more tough action against the agencies in case of their involvement with fraud and forgery," he said.
Sources said the Malaysian government has issued so far 236,880 call-in-visas since October 22,2006 until the imposition of fresh ban on import of manpower from Bangladesh.
During the same period, a senior official said, "We have issued clearance to 216,619 workers for departure to Malaysia."
Out of them, he said, 184,403 workers have already left while the rest will travel shortly.