Formulation of overseas job policy at final stage

Finance Minister AMA Muhith in his budget speech said Thursday that the formulation of draft Overseas Employment Policy, 2014 by amending the existing one is at the final stage.
He said so far we have opened 12 labour wings in our missions abroad and 11 more will be opened soon to expand our labour market.
He informed the House that around 8.7 million Bangladeshi workers are now working abroad. Of them about 2.5 million workers got overseas employment from January 2009 to December 2013.
He said employment generation is one of the key elements of the total endeavours that are in place for eradicating poverty.
The Finance Minister said in order to develop skilled manpower to be sent abroad, 27 training centres and 5 institutes of marine technology are being established.
He said the model of sending manpower abroad at low cost using Government to Government (G2G) method has already created much enthusiasm in other countries.
The system of migration management has been digitised to ensure security of life and livelihood of the migrant workers, he added.
He said for this, online registration has been made compulsory. In addition, the facilities for providing smart cards with finger prints, online visa revision and online submission of complaints by the deceived workers have been created.
The minister said they have taken several initiatives to expand the overseas labour market. During the last BNP led coalition government, workers were sent to only 97 countries. Thanks to our successful labour diplomacy, we are now sending our workers to 159 countries on the world.