Overseas migration issue needs concentrated focus
Thursday, 20 August 2009
Shahiduzzaman Khan
The parliamentary standing committee on expatriate welfare and overseas employment ministry expressed its deep concern over the declining trend about manpower export abroad this year as fallouts from global economic recession. In a meeting last week, 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 job market and reorganise foreign missions of the country.
According to reports, manpower exports in the first three months of the current year dropped by a large number of 85,465 compared to the corresponding period in 2008. Over 5.5 million Bangladeshis were working abroad until April 2009. But a large number of them have returned in recent times. Malaysia cancelled the visas of 55,000 Bangladeshi workers a few months back. Romania did not accept more than 10,000 Bangladeshi workers. Only recently, Mauritius decided to send back 6,000 Bangladeshi workers. All these serve as sordid pointers to shrinking job opportunities in the overseas for the Bangladeshis.
There has otherwise been a significant growth in inflow of remittance funds last fiscal year, despite predictions otherwise by several donor agencies. But it now remains doubtful whether this growth is sustainable. Questions also arise about whether increased earnings last fiscal have largely been because of one-go remittance sent by those who had lost their jobs, or not.
The expatriate welfare and overseas employment minister does not agree with those who maintain that the return of a large number of expatriates was the main factor for the remittance growth. In a recent meeting with a World Bank (WB) team, he stated that there had not been any marked fall in the number of Bangladeshi workers going abroad. When official statistics showed a declining trend, it is not understandable as to how the minister could be so upbeat in assessing the overall situation. The WB team suggested to the minister to make efforts for sending educated, skilled and qualified Bangladeshi workers abroad to help sustained growth of remittances and prevent any lay-off because of global economic slowdown.
Most 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.
In order to deal with such issues, the parliamentary standing committee gave two months time to manpower export-related government and private agencies for coming up with detailed action plans to help address many irregularities and management problems in the sector. It asked the leaders of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) to fix the migration cost of workers at not more than Tk. 0.1 million and also fix the minimum salary for them. The authorities concerned have likewise been told by the committee to introduce low-cost passports for workers seeking employments abroad, to cut their health screening fees and to reduce Dhaka-Saudi Arabia airfare. Saudi Arabia is the largest employer of Bangladeshi workers, though, of late, the number of now recruitments from the Bangladeshis by the Saudi companies has been on the decline.
Now the question remains: when will these decisions be implemented? The fact remains that many such 'wise' recommendations were taken up many a times in the past. Not a single major decision saw the light of the day. Even after so many years since country's independence, no comprehensive manpower policy could be formulated. In 2001, there was an initial move to prepare it. After two years, a secretarial committee was assigned to finalise the draft policy. Yet the draft is rotting in the shelves of the concerned authorities. Most labour-exporting countries, including emerging economies like China and India, have well-defined policies in place to help their workers going abroad. Even a rich European country like Sweden offers its citizens cash endowment of $30,000 to find jobs abroad. The Philippines has introduced an active retraining and allowance programme for its retrenched migrant workers. The government may take lessons from the countries that achieved commendable success in the manpower export.
It is not, however, clear how the government will persuade members of BAIRA to take 'nominal' charges from the job seekers. In most cases, recruiting agents do not give payment receipts. If they are forced to do so, they will most likely give receipts to the workers in line with government-approved fees. The hapless job seekers do not have alternatives other than to accept those, as their only mission is to go abroad for maintenance of their families, mostly at a subsistence level. In fact, no logic works here. In this way, the agents will continue to trick the government and the job seekers as well.
Not so long ago, the government had announced that an expatriate welfare bank would be set up to help the job-seekers get easy loan. Still the proposal is at a nascent stage as raising capital for the proposed bank raised a debate. Some suggested formation of the bank with the expatriate development fund. Some others suggested its formation with public money. According to reports, a substantial amount of money of the expatriate development fund is also missing from the bank. Nobody knows its whereabouts.
As noted earlier, the parliamentary standing body suggested for reorganisation of the labour wings of the country's missions abroad. Several attempts were made earlier to reinvigorate the activities of the missions abroad. Those have not yielded much of any positive result. Due to inefficient handling of the manpower issue by the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, the country is almost on the verge of losing Malaysian market, following the cancellation of 55,000 visas for Bangladeshis.
An effective manpower policy is now considered extremely important for exploring new job markets abroad. There are, according to those who are in the know of things, many unexplored areas where the opportunities for opening new fronts are still possible. The government needs to be serious about tapping this potential. The sooner, the better.
szkhan@thefinancialexpress-bd.com
The parliamentary standing committee on expatriate welfare and overseas employment ministry expressed its deep concern over the declining trend about manpower export abroad this year as fallouts from global economic recession. In a meeting last week, 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 job market and reorganise foreign missions of the country.
According to reports, manpower exports in the first three months of the current year dropped by a large number of 85,465 compared to the corresponding period in 2008. Over 5.5 million Bangladeshis were working abroad until April 2009. But a large number of them have returned in recent times. Malaysia cancelled the visas of 55,000 Bangladeshi workers a few months back. Romania did not accept more than 10,000 Bangladeshi workers. Only recently, Mauritius decided to send back 6,000 Bangladeshi workers. All these serve as sordid pointers to shrinking job opportunities in the overseas for the Bangladeshis.
There has otherwise been a significant growth in inflow of remittance funds last fiscal year, despite predictions otherwise by several donor agencies. But it now remains doubtful whether this growth is sustainable. Questions also arise about whether increased earnings last fiscal have largely been because of one-go remittance sent by those who had lost their jobs, or not.
The expatriate welfare and overseas employment minister does not agree with those who maintain that the return of a large number of expatriates was the main factor for the remittance growth. In a recent meeting with a World Bank (WB) team, he stated that there had not been any marked fall in the number of Bangladeshi workers going abroad. When official statistics showed a declining trend, it is not understandable as to how the minister could be so upbeat in assessing the overall situation. The WB team suggested to the minister to make efforts for sending educated, skilled and qualified Bangladeshi workers abroad to help sustained growth of remittances and prevent any lay-off because of global economic slowdown.
Most 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.
In order to deal with such issues, the parliamentary standing committee gave two months time to manpower export-related government and private agencies for coming up with detailed action plans to help address many irregularities and management problems in the sector. It asked the leaders of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) to fix the migration cost of workers at not more than Tk. 0.1 million and also fix the minimum salary for them. The authorities concerned have likewise been told by the committee to introduce low-cost passports for workers seeking employments abroad, to cut their health screening fees and to reduce Dhaka-Saudi Arabia airfare. Saudi Arabia is the largest employer of Bangladeshi workers, though, of late, the number of now recruitments from the Bangladeshis by the Saudi companies has been on the decline.
Now the question remains: when will these decisions be implemented? The fact remains that many such 'wise' recommendations were taken up many a times in the past. Not a single major decision saw the light of the day. Even after so many years since country's independence, no comprehensive manpower policy could be formulated. In 2001, there was an initial move to prepare it. After two years, a secretarial committee was assigned to finalise the draft policy. Yet the draft is rotting in the shelves of the concerned authorities. Most labour-exporting countries, including emerging economies like China and India, have well-defined policies in place to help their workers going abroad. Even a rich European country like Sweden offers its citizens cash endowment of $30,000 to find jobs abroad. The Philippines has introduced an active retraining and allowance programme for its retrenched migrant workers. The government may take lessons from the countries that achieved commendable success in the manpower export.
It is not, however, clear how the government will persuade members of BAIRA to take 'nominal' charges from the job seekers. In most cases, recruiting agents do not give payment receipts. If they are forced to do so, they will most likely give receipts to the workers in line with government-approved fees. The hapless job seekers do not have alternatives other than to accept those, as their only mission is to go abroad for maintenance of their families, mostly at a subsistence level. In fact, no logic works here. In this way, the agents will continue to trick the government and the job seekers as well.
Not so long ago, the government had announced that an expatriate welfare bank would be set up to help the job-seekers get easy loan. Still the proposal is at a nascent stage as raising capital for the proposed bank raised a debate. Some suggested formation of the bank with the expatriate development fund. Some others suggested its formation with public money. According to reports, a substantial amount of money of the expatriate development fund is also missing from the bank. Nobody knows its whereabouts.
As noted earlier, the parliamentary standing body suggested for reorganisation of the labour wings of the country's missions abroad. Several attempts were made earlier to reinvigorate the activities of the missions abroad. Those have not yielded much of any positive result. Due to inefficient handling of the manpower issue by the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, the country is almost on the verge of losing Malaysian market, following the cancellation of 55,000 visas for Bangladeshis.
An effective manpower policy is now considered extremely important for exploring new job markets abroad. There are, according to those who are in the know of things, many unexplored areas where the opportunities for opening new fronts are still possible. The government needs to be serious about tapping this potential. The sooner, the better.
szkhan@thefinancialexpress-bd.com