PM's S Korea, Malaysia trips seen crucial for boosting labour export

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A Z M Anas
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina faces a key litmus test as she begins touring South Korea in mid-May aimed at boosting labour recruitment in the East Asian nation, officials said Wednesday.
As part of her Southeast Asian tour, officials said Sheikh Hasina would also go to Malaysia, where she will urge her Malaysian counterpart to lift a freeze on the recruitment of Bangladeshi workers.
"It's a crucial visit as it involves two of the country's major manpower destinations in Southeast Asia," Monirul Islam, a director general of the Foreign Office, said.
Mr Islam who heads the Southeast Asian Desk said that the prime minister would sit with top South Korean leaders and her meeting would focus on the cooperation in labour recruitment, energy and information technology.
Migration experts say the visit will be seen as a key test for the prime minister as the country's traditional overseas job markets continue to falter in the wake of the global recession.
The prime minister's Korea visit comes at a time when Seoul has resumed hiring Bangladeshi workers after suspension in March 2009, just a year after it began recruitment from Bangladesh under the Employment Permit System (EPS).
Officials at the Overseas Employment Ministry said South Korean companies, faced with huge export orders, have offered to take in more than 4,000 Bangladeshis from the EPS roster. Already, some 2,500 Bangladeshis found factory jobs taking the advanatge of EPS.
The US$1.0 trillion South Korean economy, heavily reliant on exports, was hit hard when demand for merchandise in the developed world crimped in the wake of the global financial crisis. That also sapped demand for foreign workers.
Officials, however, acknowledged this week's demonstration in Dhaka by hundreds of jobseekers rallying against the inaction of state recruiter, BOESL, would overshadow the prime ministerial trip. Jobseekers have alleged the apathy of Bangladesh Employment Services Ltd. cost the potential placements of over 500 Bangladeshis, mostly educated youths, in the South Korean manufacturing sector.
Asked whether the prime minister would raise the issue of the ill-fated workers, who obtained job offers but face uncertainty due to negligence of the government agency, Mr Islam said she could not negotiate on an issue, which was not created by the Korean government.
But a source said Bangladesh's interest would be better served if the Bangladesh side had taken action to renew the bilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) on manpower recruitment during the prime minister's visit. Signed in 2007, the deal expired last year and an interim agreement is now in place.
Bangladeshi workers used to go to South Korea since 1994 through private recruiting agents under the industrial trainee system (ITS), which was replaced later by EPS.
Under the MoU, two agencies-Bangladesh Overseas Employment Services Limited (BOESL) of Bangladesh and Human Resources Development of Korea-are entrusted with the responsibility of hiring Bangladeshi workers.
Overseas Employment Ministry officials said the introduction of EPS has not only reduced the cost of migration, but also curbed the role of private recruiting agencies, which allegedly leeched on job aspirants, mostly poor.
Shamsun Nahar, joint secretary of the Overseas Employment Ministry, had earlier said workers can now secure jobs in Korea, spending just Tk 54,000, which is much lower than Tk 84,000 in official fees for employment in Malaysia alone.
But she said the wages are much higher in South Korea, compared to most other traditional manpower markets in Asia, which hosts around 92 per cent of Bangladeshi migrant workers.
Sheikh Hasina will present a keynote speech at a high-level UN panel on "Sustaining the recovery and dynamism for inclusive development" on May 18 in Incheon.
On the same day, Sheikh Hasina will fly to Malaysia to take part in an international conference dedicated to Islamic finance and banking.
On the sidelines of the conference, she is scheduled to meet her Malaysian counterpart and take up the issue of a manpower ban leading to the cancellation of 55,000 calling visas for Bangladeshis.
In Bangladesh, labour migration has gained prominence as one of the major avenues for employment generation and also one of the biggest sources of foreign exchange earnings.
Over a period of 33 years, between 1976 and 2008, more than 6.26 million Bangladeshi workers found overseas jobs, according to official figures, thus reducing pressure on the domestic job market.
The annual outflow has been steadily growing peaking at 875,000 in 2008 while the remittances sent by migrant workers through legal channels alone also touched the peak last year, amounting to over US$ 10 billion.