S Korea for steps against workers changing jobs

South Korea has sought Bangladesh's punitive measures against workers who frequently violate job agreements and stay there illegally.
A team of Korea's Employment Permit System (EPS) Centre in Dhaka recently met high-ups of the Foreign Ministry and urged them to take steps against such unethical practice. The team said such an action will help raise Bangladesh's manpower export to South Korea and strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries, sources at the Korean Embassy in Dhaka said.
According to them, Bangladesh could not yet fully utilise its labour export quota in the lucrative South Korean market under the EPS system mainly due to frequent job- switching tendency of Bangladeshi workers and for lack of relevant skills.
"Job-switching tendency of Bangladeshi workers is higher than those of other countries. This makes Korean companies think twice before recruiting Bangladeshi workers," Min-Hwa Lee, director of the EPS Centre in Dhaka told the FE.
"If the government takes punitive measures against the illegal workers, then we believe frequent job-switching practices could be brought down significantly and thus there will be more recruitment of Bangladeshi workers," he added.
"A company recruits the workers and gives them necessary training, but after a certain period, they switch over to another company. It is a big loss for any employer", the EPS director further added.
Replying to a question, Mr Lee said Bangladesh could never fulfill its quota of workers. So how would the Korean government would further increase it?, he asked.
The director said the Korean government last year had kept a quota of 2,000 workers from Bangladesh, but the companies had recruited 1,800.
"It was only 1,300 in 2012 against the same quota," he said. This year, Bangladesh can send a maximum of 2,700 workers.
Bangladesh signed the EPS agreement with Korea in 2007 and started sending workers from 2008 through the government-to-government channel.
The Korean Human Resources Development's EPS Centre tests workers' skills and Korean language proficiency before forwarding a list to companies that want to recruit foreign workers.
Under the system, the Korean employer takes the final decision of hiring workers from any of the 15 countries that have signed EPS agreement with Korea.
According to the data available with the EPS centre in Dhaka, Bangladesh has been able to send only about 10,000 workers since 2008. Of them, over seven per cent became illegal immigrants.
"It's very sensitive for us," Mr Lee said. "Vietnam has not been able to send any worker for the last one and a half year due to the illegal-stay problem." However, recently some Bangladeshi job-seekers in Korea held street demonstrations after failing to find them employed in Korean companies. "It all depends on the owners of a company. We just prepare a list and send it to them," Mr Lee said.
"Once listed, a name would be in the automated process for a year for hiring before being deleted." It is an automated system, but workers can extend their enrolment for another year after giving a fresh medical test.
"We (the Korean government) can only select eligible workers, but cannot guarantee their jobs," he added.
Korea takes foreign workers through the EPS system, which had won an award from the United Nations in 2011 for its transparency and efficiency in hiring foreign workers.
The Korean job market is lucrative for most Bangladeshi workers where they can earn over Tk 150,000 a month, five to six times higher than that of the usual Middle East market.
A worker can stay in Korea for a maximum of four years and 10 months at a time.
According to the EPS system, if the workers work in the same company, they can go back again to Korea for the same period after three months' stay in Bangladesh.