Lifting a four-year ban, the Malaysian government has decided to recruit 10,000 male workers from Bangladesh for its plantation sector, Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain said yesterday.

The ministry had received a formal request in this regard through the Kuala Lumpur High Commission office Sunday, the minister told a press briefing in the ministry's conference room.

At first, the Malaysian government was looking to recruit 30,000 Bangladeshi workers for the plantation sector, but later they cut the number down to 10,000, said Mosharraf, adding that the country would continue to recruit more Bangladeshis depending on the demand in the sector.

The government will start registering the names of

interested job seekers from January 13. The registration will need to be done online at 4,500 information and service centres at the union parishad offices across the country.

Initially, a database of 35,000 jobseekers would be prepared. From this list 10,000 would be selected through a lottery for this phase of recruitment in Malaysia. The selected persons would have to face some tests, including for health, before they received confirmation through mobile SMS, said the minister.

He said the migration cost, which includes airfare, health tests, training and others, would not be more than Tk 40,000 per person. The selected persons would have to deposit the money to government-fixed places.

The online registration will begin with the Dhaka and Barisal divisions. Interested

candidates of these divisions will have to register between January 13 and 15. Their names will be selected through a lottery on January 16.

Candidates from the Rajshahi, Rangpur and Sylhet divisions will be able to register between January 14 and 16. Names of the selected candidates from these divisions will be announced on January 17.

For the Chittagong and Khulna divisions, the registration will be held between January 15and 17.Theirselec-tion would be made on January 18.

Each job seeker would have to pay Tk 50 for the regis-tration, said minister Mosharraf.

The selection of workers from each union will be done under a quota system based on the demographic map, but there is no restriction on

registration, said Begum Shamsun Nahar, director general of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training.

Replying to a query about political influences in the registration or the selection process, Minister Mosharraf ruled out any such possibilities saying that a government official would monitor the registration and selection process at each registration centre.

On November 26 last year, Kuala Lumpur signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Dhaka on recruitment of Bangladeshi workers to Malaysia through state arrangements.

The Malaysian government had unofficially stopped hiring Bangladeshi workers from 2009 on allegations of corruption and irregularities in the recruitment process.