Govt takes up strategy to curb dominance of pvt recruiters

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A Z M Anas
The government has stepped up efforts to accelerate overseas recruitment and cut migration costs in a strategy aimed at curbing the dominance of private recruiters, officials said Friday.
Officials at the Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry acknowledged that the step would be "challenging" in view of the visa trading but are hopeful that non-traditional promotional campaign would enable the country's overseas labour wings and two state-run recruiting agencies to compete in the recruitment business.
"We reached a consensus that the government agencies have a huge role to play in overseas migration," director general at the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) Khorshed Alam Chowdhury said.
Mr. Chowdhury said the process would start only after having received reports from Bangladesh's labour wings abroad on the current state and potential of labour recruitment in receiving nations.
Although BMET and Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Services Ltd. (BOESL) were created to send workers abroad at lower costs, only the 26-year-old-BOESL is involved in the deployment process. Established in 1976, the BMET is responsible for regulating the overseas employment sector, but it has withdrawn from direct recruiting of workers after the creation of BOESL in 1980s.
Officials said the two state agencies are well-placed to curb the influence of private recruiting agencies, but have no promotional activities in the world's major manpower receiving nations.
Bangladesh is a major labour sending nation in the world and its workers' outflow first topped 100,000 in 1989, since the country's entry to the global labour market in the 1970s.
Asia remains the magnet for the country's migrants, hosting as much as 92 per cent of an estimated 6.2 million Bangladeshis who managed to find overseas jobs between 1976 and 2008, according to the United Nations.
Muhammad Abdullah, the new managing director at BOESL, admitted that his agency's performance may be "insignificant" in terms of total workers sent abroad but it can still deploy labourers at the maximum Tk 65,000.
Between 1990 and 2008, official figures say, BOESL managed to send just 14,000 workers including skilled manpower.
There is still scope to expand overseas labour markets, Mr. Abdullah said, adding it would require non-traditional approach to promotional activities.
Labour recruitment in Bangladesh's major manpower markets more than halved last year under pressure from the worst global recession in decades-- after a peak in 2008.
"But it's challenging," he told this correspondent, alluding to the fact the government agencies would have to compete with hundreds of private recruiters who procure work permits in exchange of kickbacks to foreign-based agents.
An official at the Overseas Employment Ministry said that the renewed step, if successful, would shield migrant workers from fraud by 50,000-60,000 sub-agents who receive between Tk. 10,000 and Tk. 60,000 as commission from the agencies on a case-by-case basis.
Although nearly 800 private agencies obtained license from the government to facilitate foreign placements of Bangladeshi overseas jobseekers, few are involved in direct recruitment, relying on sub-agents instead.
The Army taskforce, formed during the last caretaker government, recommended introducing the registration system of dalals or sub-agents in a bid to plug the black hole in the overseas recruitment industry.
The renewed move elicited sharp reaction from private recruiters who saw the government's role as "contradictory."
"Once you took earnest money from 800-odd recruiting agencies. But now, you want to limit our role. It's contradictory," owner of a top recruiting agency said who preferred to remain unidentified because of repraisal.
But migration experts are unconvinced, saying unless the government injects new momentum into state agencies, neither of them would be able to make "much diference" to the country's overseas migration scenario.
"The BOESL was able to send a minuscule number of workers since its inception in 1984. It even failed to send enough manpower to South Korea under a fine job scheme," the exprt said.
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.
The deployment of workers has peaked 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.