KL to hire 0.5m from BD this year

Malaysia will recruit 500,000 workers from Bangladesh this year under a business-to-business (B-to-B) arrangement.
Each worker will be recruited for a term of three years with an option of extension of the term by one year.
The decision came at a bilateral meeting between Malaysian Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and Bangladeshi Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment (EWOE) Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain in Putrajaya on Wednesday.
The Malaysian minister confirmed the recruitment from the government's existing database of 1.4 million workers to the Bangladeshi minister, said a press release of the ministry.
A delegation from the south-east Asian country will visit Bangladesh shortly to this effect. After the visit, technical committees of both the governments will examine an agreement on the B-to-B mechanism.
During the meeting the Malaysian home minister said his country would welcome legal workers from Bangladesh.
Khandker Mosharraf Hossain focused on the need for examining the new mechanism carefully.
He also gave importance to hassle-free and transparent migration process as well as reasonable migration cost.
Workers' security and welfare have to be guaranteed by the employers, he opined.
Meanwhile, so far around 9,000 Bangladeshi workers have gone to Malaysia with job under government-to-government (G-to-G) arrangement after signing a MoU in this connection in 2012.  
Recently, the harrowing tales of sufferings of human trafficking victims created a stir across the world. Thousands of job-seekers became victims at the hands of human smugglers, who smuggled them to Malaysia and Thailand through sea-route, promising lucrative jobs.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found that between 2012 and June 2014, more than 87,000 people travelled to Thailand and Malaysia through trawlers.
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