72,000 migrants return as jobs dry up overseas

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A Z M Anas
Some 72,000 Bangladeshis returned home jobless last year as global recession sapped demand for workers in the country's traditional overseas job markets, manpower officials said Friday.
That figure was an increase of 33 per cent compared with 2008 when 54,000 Bangladeshis were deported home.
Between January and December, official statistics say, the highest number of Bangladeshi workers returned from Saudi Arabia, followed by the UAE's debt-ridden Dubai Emirate.
"It's not alarming. It's not all gloom and doom," an official at the overseas employment ministry said.
"Manpower exports are expected to pick up this year. Even Dubai has resumed taking in Bangladeshis in its construction sector besides Libya and Iraq," the official added.
The number of Bangladeshi workers who found overseas jobs in 2009 almost halved to 475,278, down from an all-time high of 875,000 in 2008 as a result of the global recession, according to figures available with the BMET (Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training).
The global financial and economic crisis has hammered the Gulf and the Southeast Asian economies, stricken by export slump or credit crunch, forcing their companies to retrench foreign recruits. The country's overseas jobs were affected as some of the destinations happened to be Bangladesh's major manpower markets.
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has estimated that 92 per cent Bangladeshi migrant workers, majority of whom are unskilled and semi-skilled, are employed in Asia.
"Saudi Arabia alone deported 23,000 Bangladeshi workers. As a manpower market, this market fared badly," an official at the BMET said.
Saudi Arabia hosts an estimated 2.0 million Bangladeshis and officials said the return of the retrenched workers from the oil-rich Kingdom was not so "worrying."
"The return of 23,000 odd migrants from this country is normal, " he said.
He said Dubai, which was forced to put on hold or cancel multi-billion dollar construction and real estate projects, deported thousands of Bangladeshi workers between May and September, but quickly resumed receiving workers from October.
Although Malaysia revoked calling visas of 55,000 Bangladeshis last March, it deported insignificant number of workers-only 200 Bangladeshi workers came back from the country.
Officials said workers who were deported from Singapore last year were engaged in the marine and shipping industries, but those engaged in the construction sector remained unscathed.
"The marine industry is reliant on investments from the USA and the UK. After the credit crunch, those companies scaled down their operations," another official said.
Officials said the deportation figure of 2008 should be seen as "routine return" after the expiry of stay visas--not linked to the global downturn.
They noted that subject to improvement of security situation, Iraq will more than offset the lull in employment in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Officials at the state-run Bureau of Manpower said the agency was tallying the return migration figures since January 2009 when Bangladeshi workers started to return home in droves.
Officials, however, said the pace of return migration decreased in late last year after accelerating in May to September period.
International migration is tied to Bangladesh's growth story, with remittances playing an increasingly important role in the economy.
The World Bank says remittances helped the country reduce poverty and stimulate domestic demand.