More than 8.88m workers went abroad legally: Mosharraf

Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Engineer Khandakar Mosharraf Hossain on Sunday informed the House that 88,87,111 Bangladesh workers went to different countries of the world legally till May 2014 since the independence. ‘Of them, 80 per cent are working in the Middle Eastern countries,’ he said in reply to a scripted question from treasury bench member M Abdul Latif. ‘26,34,403 Bangladesh workers have gone to Saudi Arabia and 23,12,459 workers have gone to the United Arab Emirates legally,’ he said. The Minister said the government has been working sincerely to explore new labour markets in the Middle Eastern countries side by side with retaining the existing markets. ‘Bangladeshi workers are being sent to 159 countries now by expanding new labour markets in 62 countries in the last five years,’ he said. Mosharraf said the number of Bangladeshi workers who went to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon and Jordan in 2013 and till May of the current year is 3,92,383. ‘The recruiting countries try to balance the number of overseas workers if their number becomes more,’ he said. ‘That’s why, the number of Bangladeshi workers in the Middle Eastern countries has been saturated. But there is no scope for saying that the labour market has been squeezed in the Middle Eastern countries,’ he said. The Expatriates Welfare Minister said the government has given emphasis on raising trained manpower as the workers recruiting nations have showed interest in recruiting skill and trained workers instead of unskilled workers, according to BSS.