Strategies to streamline manpower export need to be implemented
Sunday, 2 November 2008
Shahiduzzaman Khan
THE government formulated a seven-point strategy to ensure the well-being of the Bangladeshi workers abroad and expand the manpower-export market worldwide by removing the prevailing hurdles more than a year ago. The strategy included exploring new manpower export markets in the Scandinavian, European and East European countries like Norway, Sweden and Romania. But the government, in fact, could not make any headway in implementing its decisions to expand the manpower market.
The strategy included extension of the existing markets in the Middle-East, enhancing skills in the English language, exporting manpower from Monga-affected areas, ensuring proper utilisation of remittances, ensuring strong monitoring to check fraud in manpower export, and working together with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the International Migration Organisation (IMO). The government had adopted the strategy with the belief that the country's prime foreign currency earnings would come from the manpower-export sector.
As it appears, there was no visible initiative to explore the manpower markets in the Middle-East. Global economic crisis has already gripped the USA and some of the countries in Europe. Many countries in the Middle East are still unaffected and the demand for manpower did not fall there. Libya wants to employ a large number of Bangladeshis and an agreement to this effect is to be signed very soon. Demand for skilled Bangladeshi labourers is very high in Dubai, where the construction sector is having a boom. There is no tangible efforts to make the intending immigrants a skilled workforce. Some vocational institutes are being set up in private sector, but their standard of teaching is not upto the mark. Forgery still continues in the manpower trade and there are thousands of instances that the immigrant workers were cheated in their work places abroad. There is no strong monitoring on the fraudulent practices of the manpower recruiting agencies.
The Indian Institute of Management recently conducted a research on 'making Bangladesh a leading manpower exporter: Chasing a dream of $30 billion annual migrant remittance by 2015'. According to the study report, Bangladesh has to target Spain, France, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, and Austria for manpower export on a priority basis as these countries have high remittance potential but low presence of Bangladeshis. The report said, in the short and medium terms, Bangladesh should target occupations such as agriculture professionals, clerical and secretarial jobs, accountant, technicians, chefs and caterers, carpenters, masons, drivers, and electricians. But, after establishing high-quality training institutes, the country should export doctors, nurses, financial experts, and managers in the long run, the report added.
The caretaker government has now decided to deal with the manpower-export business in the new manpower markets taking lesson from Malaysian incidents of workers' harassment. An agreement has been signed between the Korean Human Resource Department (HRD) and Bangladesh's state-owned recruiting agency Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Service Limited (BOESL). Korea is recruiting about 3,000 workers. The country will recruit more Bangladeshis in future. Those who are now in Korea will get priority in recruitment as they have command on Korean language.
The country-wise trend of manpower export reveals that the Middle-Eastern countries including the UAE are major overseas job markets for Bangladesh. Over 0.8 million Bangladeshis, including some 125,616 during the last eight months of the current year, have so far gone to the UAE with jobs. Bangladesh sent more than 542,000 workers abroad of which 235,000 went to Malaysia this year. The country received US$ 7.0 billion in remittance last year. If the trend continues, the remittance flow is expected to exceed US$ 8.0 billion-mark at the end of this year.
Sustaining the remittance growth has become a major challenge for Bangladesh as the development dynamics in the Middle East has been changing fast. They have adopted latest technologies that require highly skilled workers in almost all sectors. The country needs to progressively change the country mix and increase skill level of its migrant workers to sustain its remittance growth.
Since fiscal year 1999-2000, Bangladesh has received around 85 per cent of its remittance from only five countries - Saudi Arabia, the United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait. In the last fiscal year, these five countries accounted for more than $5.5 billion of the total remittance inflow of $6.0 billion. But, recently the development dynamics in the three Middle East countries has been changing rapidly, posing a threat to Bangladesh's manpower exports.
Most of the Middle Eastern countries including Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE can now be compared with any developed country and mere proficiency in Arabic may not be enough to get jobs in those countries in the future. An adequate number of international-standard vocational and training institutes must be set up to groom the future workforce destined for the Middle East. Non-governmental organisations and private entrepreneurs can establish such institutes, which should be affiliated with similar institutes in the developed countries, with the government playing a facilitating role. Over 4.6 million Bangladeshis are now working abroad.
Meanwhile. the government is planning some changes in its emigration rules and procedures. Although overseas employment is a crucial sector, it is yet to get adequate attention. A number of steps are now underway to improve this situation drastically. As part of the process, a committee headed by an official of the ministry has been formed to monitor high cost of migration to Malaysia.
Another committee is looking into the overall situation in manpower business and identify the problems and irregularities in this sector. And the government is also communicating with the International Organisation for Migration (IMO) for further consultation on cross-border issues that affect labour migration. Experts on manpower businesses and migration say the cost of migration becomes high because of sharp competition among recruiting agencies for buying job demand letters or visas from employers in the manpower importing countries. This has become a tricky issue, which needs immediate government attention.
Manpower brokers or sub-agents at home also realise huge amounts of money, sometimes even more than the recruiting agent's profit, from overseas job seekers most of whom collect money through loans at high rates of interest or sale of land. As per normal procedures, workers sign contract papers that describe wages, other facilities and working conditions. But a section of manpower brokers do not care for all this and send workers just as travellers. Unscrupulous recruiting agencies also make fake contract papers, showing exaggerated wages and facilities. Such undocumented workers are either deported from the manpower importing countries, or become illegal and work under inhuman conditions if allowed to stay there. In many cases, employers give the workers new contract papers with poor wages and less facilities.
The emigration rules need to be made more comprehensive. With such realities, a large number of Bangladeshi workers cannot benefit from cross-border migration for jobs. The government has already made it mandatory for workers to present contract papers and money receipts for payments made to recruiting agencies when they attend briefing sessions at the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET). The agencies also must select workers from the database of BMET for sending them abroad. The government is also considering if manpower brokers could be brought under a legal framework to prevent them from cheating overseas job seekers. An effective system is likely to be introduced to monitor the activities of manpower recruiting agents so that none of them could cheat people seeking employment abroad.
................................................................
szkhan@thefinancialexpress-bd.com
THE government formulated a seven-point strategy to ensure the well-being of the Bangladeshi workers abroad and expand the manpower-export market worldwide by removing the prevailing hurdles more than a year ago. The strategy included exploring new manpower export markets in the Scandinavian, European and East European countries like Norway, Sweden and Romania. But the government, in fact, could not make any headway in implementing its decisions to expand the manpower market.
The strategy included extension of the existing markets in the Middle-East, enhancing skills in the English language, exporting manpower from Monga-affected areas, ensuring proper utilisation of remittances, ensuring strong monitoring to check fraud in manpower export, and working together with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the International Migration Organisation (IMO). The government had adopted the strategy with the belief that the country's prime foreign currency earnings would come from the manpower-export sector.
As it appears, there was no visible initiative to explore the manpower markets in the Middle-East. Global economic crisis has already gripped the USA and some of the countries in Europe. Many countries in the Middle East are still unaffected and the demand for manpower did not fall there. Libya wants to employ a large number of Bangladeshis and an agreement to this effect is to be signed very soon. Demand for skilled Bangladeshi labourers is very high in Dubai, where the construction sector is having a boom. There is no tangible efforts to make the intending immigrants a skilled workforce. Some vocational institutes are being set up in private sector, but their standard of teaching is not upto the mark. Forgery still continues in the manpower trade and there are thousands of instances that the immigrant workers were cheated in their work places abroad. There is no strong monitoring on the fraudulent practices of the manpower recruiting agencies.
The Indian Institute of Management recently conducted a research on 'making Bangladesh a leading manpower exporter: Chasing a dream of $30 billion annual migrant remittance by 2015'. According to the study report, Bangladesh has to target Spain, France, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, and Austria for manpower export on a priority basis as these countries have high remittance potential but low presence of Bangladeshis. The report said, in the short and medium terms, Bangladesh should target occupations such as agriculture professionals, clerical and secretarial jobs, accountant, technicians, chefs and caterers, carpenters, masons, drivers, and electricians. But, after establishing high-quality training institutes, the country should export doctors, nurses, financial experts, and managers in the long run, the report added.
The caretaker government has now decided to deal with the manpower-export business in the new manpower markets taking lesson from Malaysian incidents of workers' harassment. An agreement has been signed between the Korean Human Resource Department (HRD) and Bangladesh's state-owned recruiting agency Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Service Limited (BOESL). Korea is recruiting about 3,000 workers. The country will recruit more Bangladeshis in future. Those who are now in Korea will get priority in recruitment as they have command on Korean language.
The country-wise trend of manpower export reveals that the Middle-Eastern countries including the UAE are major overseas job markets for Bangladesh. Over 0.8 million Bangladeshis, including some 125,616 during the last eight months of the current year, have so far gone to the UAE with jobs. Bangladesh sent more than 542,000 workers abroad of which 235,000 went to Malaysia this year. The country received US$ 7.0 billion in remittance last year. If the trend continues, the remittance flow is expected to exceed US$ 8.0 billion-mark at the end of this year.
Sustaining the remittance growth has become a major challenge for Bangladesh as the development dynamics in the Middle East has been changing fast. They have adopted latest technologies that require highly skilled workers in almost all sectors. The country needs to progressively change the country mix and increase skill level of its migrant workers to sustain its remittance growth.
Since fiscal year 1999-2000, Bangladesh has received around 85 per cent of its remittance from only five countries - Saudi Arabia, the United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait. In the last fiscal year, these five countries accounted for more than $5.5 billion of the total remittance inflow of $6.0 billion. But, recently the development dynamics in the three Middle East countries has been changing rapidly, posing a threat to Bangladesh's manpower exports.
Most of the Middle Eastern countries including Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE can now be compared with any developed country and mere proficiency in Arabic may not be enough to get jobs in those countries in the future. An adequate number of international-standard vocational and training institutes must be set up to groom the future workforce destined for the Middle East. Non-governmental organisations and private entrepreneurs can establish such institutes, which should be affiliated with similar institutes in the developed countries, with the government playing a facilitating role. Over 4.6 million Bangladeshis are now working abroad.
Meanwhile. the government is planning some changes in its emigration rules and procedures. Although overseas employment is a crucial sector, it is yet to get adequate attention. A number of steps are now underway to improve this situation drastically. As part of the process, a committee headed by an official of the ministry has been formed to monitor high cost of migration to Malaysia.
Another committee is looking into the overall situation in manpower business and identify the problems and irregularities in this sector. And the government is also communicating with the International Organisation for Migration (IMO) for further consultation on cross-border issues that affect labour migration. Experts on manpower businesses and migration say the cost of migration becomes high because of sharp competition among recruiting agencies for buying job demand letters or visas from employers in the manpower importing countries. This has become a tricky issue, which needs immediate government attention.
Manpower brokers or sub-agents at home also realise huge amounts of money, sometimes even more than the recruiting agent's profit, from overseas job seekers most of whom collect money through loans at high rates of interest or sale of land. As per normal procedures, workers sign contract papers that describe wages, other facilities and working conditions. But a section of manpower brokers do not care for all this and send workers just as travellers. Unscrupulous recruiting agencies also make fake contract papers, showing exaggerated wages and facilities. Such undocumented workers are either deported from the manpower importing countries, or become illegal and work under inhuman conditions if allowed to stay there. In many cases, employers give the workers new contract papers with poor wages and less facilities.
The emigration rules need to be made more comprehensive. With such realities, a large number of Bangladeshi workers cannot benefit from cross-border migration for jobs. The government has already made it mandatory for workers to present contract papers and money receipts for payments made to recruiting agencies when they attend briefing sessions at the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET). The agencies also must select workers from the database of BMET for sending them abroad. The government is also considering if manpower brokers could be brought under a legal framework to prevent them from cheating overseas job seekers. An effective system is likely to be introduced to monitor the activities of manpower recruiting agents so that none of them could cheat people seeking employment abroad.
................................................................
szkhan@thefinancialexpress-bd.com