Manpower export prospect after turmoil in the Middle-East

Securing overseas employments for the Bangladeshi workers appears to be tough and rough in the context of present scenario in the Gulf and other prospective countries. Situation in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and many other Arab countries remain tense. Economy in those countries has been hit hard due to conflict arising out of the movement for democracy. According to reports, hundreds of Bangladeshis are fleeing trouble-torn Libya and arriving in the home country everyday. Fate of many other expatriate Bangladeshis in other trouble-torn countries remains uncertain. New work opportunities almost dried up in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. For many years, these two prospective countries are not taking Bangladeshi workers for many reasons. The government finds it tough to tackle the emerging situation arising out of the turmoil in the Gulf and other prospective countries. As the government fails to explore potential manpower destinations, the country's overseas job market experienced a nosedive. The Bureau of Manpower and Employment Training (BMET), which keep the data of daily overseas employment attributed the slide to drastic fall in recruitment by the Persian Gulf countries, notably Saudi Arabia, and South East Asia. The parliamentary standing committee on expatriate welfare and overseas employment ministry expressed its deep concern over the declining trend of manpower export abroad. In a recent meeting, the committee called for urgent steps by the government to help arrest this trend. It also highlighted the need for searching for new potential overseas jobmarket and reorganise foreign missions of the country. Manpower recruiting agents, however, blamed the government's lack of diplomatic efforts for keeping its labour destination intact as well as fetching new countries. The government, however, said due to economic recession major manpower recruiting countries halted recruitment, which ultimately affected countries like Bangladesh. Indeed, prospect of exploring new manpower destinations for the country in coming months was really bleak. Oil-rich Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are still recruiting a good number of Bangladeshis, but the present turmoil in the Middle-East may slow down the manpower export to those countries. Job opportunities in the South East Asia dried up sharply despite the economies of regional powerhouses, Singapore and Malaysia, have come back strongly, snapping a year-long recession. The UAE remained the top destination of Bangladeshi workers in 2010 despite its companies were hit hard by the global economic recession - the worst since the Second World War. The Emirates hired more than 60,000 workers from Dhaka last year. Kuala Lumpur had imposed a total freeze on recruitment from Bangladesh, despite many assurances from its cabinet ministers to lift it. Calls from Dhaka to review the freeze have so far fallen on deaf ears. Reports suggested that Malaysian authorities were planning to recruit a large number of workers from Nepal. They are apparently not interested in Bangladeshi workers despite the resurgence of their economy in recent months. Malaysian government suspended work visa of 55,000 Bangladeshi workers in March, 2009. Since then, Bangladeshis' employment to that country came near to a halt. Very recently, the labour and manpower minister said that Bangladesh's image was brightened overseas as the present government had undertaken different positive measures. If that is the fact, then why are Nepalese workers replacing Bangladeshis in the job markets of Malaysia and Mauritius? Why do Malaysian employers now prefer Nepalese workers for agriculture and tourism industries? Recently, after a year of ban in recruiting foreign workers, Malaysia announced to hire 0.1 million Nepalese workers. Similarly, the Mauritius government has shown keen interest to hire Nepalese workers for its various emerging sectors. In fact, it was the success of the Nepalese government who had managed to propagate their people's image as hard working and loyal to the world. And it is the failure of the Bangladesh government in projecting true image of the nation abroad. Local media and a section of the government officials are unnecessarily active in projecting the country as a terrorist state. Such public projection puts serious impact on overseas recruitment, as none would like to employ foreign nationals who belong to a society, vulnerable to terrorism. It is the failure of the state-agencies who are incapable of projecting the true image of the nation. However, there is an urgency of stronger and pro-active press-wings in diplomatic missions. There are widespread opportunities in Iraq, which has employed a good number of local workers there. There is a huge job market in Iraq where Bangladesh sees immense prospect as massive reconstruction works in the war-ravaged country are in progress there. A little diplomatic effort may change the fate of the prospective migrants who want to lead a better life by securing employments abroad. But the most worrying fact is that most of the Bangladeshis on jobs abroad are poor and uneducated. Many of them had sold their ancestral homes and properties at nominal prices to meet the high fees charged by a section of unscrupulous manpower agents. Even after paying a fee of Tk 0.3 million to Tk 0.5 million, their jobs abroad are not secure, in many cases. Also a large number of them do not get jobs as per agreements signed earlier. Both the overseas hiring companies and the local agents play foul with them very often. Such incidents are happening over the years with no remedies in sight. Poor job seekers are, in the process, made to suffer immensely. Although the country receives a substantial amount of foreign currency from its expatriate workers, it has done a little to channel these funds gainfully for the long term economic development of the country. There have been proposals made to draw funds of the expatriate workers into industrial bonds to be sold by the government. The same could notably increase the rate of remittances while giving a spur to industrialisation of the country which is lagging due to insufficiency of funds. But hard measures to this end and other ways to make best possible use of the remitted moneys are yet to be taken and pursued. Even though there are legislations to safeguard the interests of the migrant workers, the respective host governments are often rather negligent in implementing these. There are often complications regarding entry due to inappropriate visas, invalid paperwork and dubious job contracts issued by corrupt recruiting agents. Once in service, the main difficulties reported by migrant workers are low, delayed, partial or prolonged non-payment of salaries, as well mistreatment by employers, extremely poor working conditions and lack of welfare provisions or help from Bangladeshi missions. There is no denying that an effective manpower policy is crucial for exploring new job markets abroad. There are many unexplored areas where the opportunities for opening new fronts are still possible. The government needs to be serious about tapping this potential. There is no time to waste. szkhan@dhaka.net