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Saudi jobs fizzling out

Kawsar Khan
The number of Bangladeshi workers heading for Saudi Arabia fell drastically in the last one year.
A total of 8,594 workers went to the Gulf country -- still the biggest remittance-earning source — during the January-June period of 2009, while the number was 1.08 lakh in the same period last year, government data shows.
The number was 24,564 in the July-December period of 2008, according to statistics of Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training of the Bangladesh government.
Experts said job opportunities for Bangladeshi workers in the Arabian country declined as the kingdom is unwilling to recruit more Bangladeshis in an attempt to maintain a balance among the number of workers from different nations.
Another reason behind such a fall is media campaign in Saudi Arabia against Bangladeshi workers by journalists of some other countries, which are the competitors of Bangladesh in the Saudi labour market, they said.
Although the market shrank amid the global recession, the Arab nation is still recruiting manpower from Nepal, India and Pakistan, skipping Bangladesh.
"Recruitment of Bangladeshi workers in the monarchy has 'virtually' come to a stop now as most of the people who went there in the last six months were not recruited by any agency or company," said Tasneem Siddiqui, chairperson of Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit.
She said it is frequently quoted that around 25 lakh Bangladeshi workers have been recruited in Saudi Arabia till date, while there is no statistics about their homecoming, and this big figure may lead to no more recruitment by the Arab slate. "The Saudi government's policy is to keep the ratio of workers from each country or ethnic group at a certain level, and so we should not unnecessarily show a big number of workers there," said Tasneem Siddiqui.
The government should take note of the number of people who returned home and are now working there so the Saudi government knows about the actual number of Bangladeshi workers.
According to official statistics, labour migration plummeted by 46 percent in the first six months this year, when around 250,900 people went overseas for jobs, while the number was 464,000 in the same period last year.
"Our business has marked a sharp fall as Saudi Arabia has not been issuing visa for the last six months, and the reason should be identified by the government" said Muhammad Mosharraf Hossain, a leader of Bangladesh Association of International RecruitingAgencies. *
President of the association Golam Mostafa recently said the government was failing to efficiently manage the labour market in the kingdom, as it lacks adequate efficient workforce for this purpose.
If any crime by Bangladeshi workers is spotted in Saudi Arabia, it receives a widespread media coverage there, whereas misdeeds by other nationals largely remain unnoticed," said Tasneem Siddiqui.
She alleged that a good number of Indian and Nepalese journalists work in the monarchy and generally try to project Bangladeshi workers negatively to make a room for their countrymen there.
She also blamed Bangladesh's mission in the Middle East country for not doing public relations works properly with Saudi media.
Bangladesh's remittance earning in fiscal 2008-09 was $9.68 billion, and Saudi Arabia contributed around 30 percent of it. kawsar@thedailyslar net