Maldives stops recruiting Bangladeshi workers

FE Team | Published: October 31, 2009 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

A Z M Anas
The country's overseas employment has suffered yet another blow as the Maldives has stopped hiring Bangladeshi workers after growing cases of overstay by Bangladeshis holding tourist visas, officials said Saturday.
After a request from Male, the state-run Manpower Bureau, which processes foreign employment, stopped issuing fresh approval to Bangladeshis seeking jobs in the Indian Ocean state, they said.
"The process of issuing approval against demand letters was suspended Thursday. It will be valid until further notice," said an official at the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET).
Official estimates have put the number of Bangladeshis living in the Maldives at 15,000, but people involved in overseas recruitment say another 15000 are working there with no legal permits.
Bureau officials said Bangladeshis enter the island state with "port of entry" visas, but they never come back and tend to work there without any legal permits.
The bad news came at a time when Bangladesh's major overseas job markets began foundering as a result of the worst recession in a generation. Recession scrimped demand of foreign workers.
More than 45,000 Bangladeshis returned home since January, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE's emirate of Dubai deporting the bulk. Thousands were sent back by the governments of Singapore and Malaysia.
Malaysia scrapped 55,000 calling visas for Bangladeshis in early March.
"It's not a good time for Bangladesh's foreign job market," an official at the Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry said.
The embargo came after Male drove home the message that it would require no new foreign workers, but it would legalise the rest of Bangladeshis working there without any legal permits.
"Male has requested us not to allow the entry of Bangladeshi potential migrants any more. It also promised to legalise thousands of undocumented ones," the official said.
Officials said last week the BMET Director General Khurshid Alam Chowdhury visited the Maldives and reported the Male's decision to the Overseas Employment and Labour Minister Khondkar Mosharraf Hossain.
"The minister verbally ordered us to stop okaying demand letters," another BMET official said.
He said Male's decision came at a time when the Bangladesh team went there to explore the promising job market.
The Maldives was supposed to hire around 30,000 Bangladeshi workers over the next few years as the island-state had launched new construction work, fuelled by its billion dollar-plus tourism industry, the official told this correspondent.
"The bulk of the workers were to be employed through social networks, not by private agencies," the BMET official said.
Tourism contributes to over 35 per cent of the Maldives' gross domestic product (GDP) directly while nearly 70 per cent of the country's economic output comes from tourism-related support industries.
The industry, considered the lifeline of the South Asian economy, has drawn more than $2.0 billion in private investments
Dubai, an emirate of the UAE, has deported tens of thousands of foreign workers stung by the downturn, while Saudi Arabia suspended new recruitment since 2006.
A record 875,000 Bangladeshis found jobs abroad last year, but officials feared that the number would halve this year under pressure from the global downturn.
Overseas migration is linked to Bangladesh's recent growth story, with workers' money-known as remittances-accounting for around 10 per cent of the country's GDP.
Bangladesh is among top 10 remittance recipient nations in the world, according to the World Bank, and an officially estimated 6.5 million overseas Bangladeshis remitted home $9.7 billion in 2009 fiscal.