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Manpower Export to 3 ME Countries

Doors still shut for local touts

Belal Hossain Biplob
Three major labour-importing countries in the Middle East are still reluctant to recruit workers from Bangladesh as they are not happy with "problematic" recruitment process of private recruiting agencies.
These recruiting agencies export manpower with the help of unrecognised middlemen, who are known as "local brokers" or “adam baparis". Both the agencies and the brokers allegedly exploit the jobseekers by charging excessive fees and sometimes providing so-called free visas.
Moreover, these agencies sometimes send workers two times the number required by the employers.
The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have identified these factors as problematic, according to ambassadors and labour counsellors of Bangladesh missions in those countries.
These labour importing countries have also expressed dissatisfaction over alleged involvement of some Bangladeshi workers in crimes, they told The Daily Star over the phone.
Some Bangladeshis are allegedly involved in smuggling, visa forgery, swindling and other crimes, said the ambassadors and counsellors.
They recommended that the expatriates' welfare and overseas employment ministry regulate the recruiting agencies strictly to check any kind of anomaly in recruitment process.
Expatriates' Welfare Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain also puts the blame on the recruiting agencies for some irregularities.
“Some of our people may get involved in criminal activities when they fail to cover their migration costs paid to the recruiting agencies. So, we have laid stress on reduction of migration costs at first," he told The Daily Star.
Besides, the recruiting agencies have been asked to set up branch offices at district level to avoid intervention by unrecognised middlemen, the minister said.
"We have been trying to streamline the manpower sector for the sake of our people. We are in continuous discussion with the labour receiving countries for resolving the existing barriers." The minister hoped that the three ME countries would soon lift the restrictions on recruitment of workers from Bangladesh.
Ali Haider Chowdhury, general secretary of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies Association, admitted that a few recruiting agencies were involved in irregularities.
The government should not have blamed all the agencies for those few, he added.
"We always urge the ministry to cancel licence of those agencies and take punitive action against them," he said, adding that some government officials might have been involved in the anomalies as well.
The three ME countries are the largest destination of Bangladeshi workers. But manpower export to the countries has seen a significant fall due to the existing restrictions.
A total of 14,241 Bangladeshi workers migrated to the UAE last year, while Saudi Arabia recruited 12,654 and Kuwait only 60 workers, according to statistics of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and
Training.
In 2012, the UAE hired more than 2.21 lakh Bangladeshis, Saudi Arabia over 25,000 and Kuwait around 300, the BMET said.
Muhammad Imran, Bangladesh ambassador to the UAE, said they believed the UAE government would lift the restriction.
"I am positive about the progress of our bilateral talks to remove the existing restrictions on hiring our people. But there is no specific information," he told The Daily Star.
At the beginning of last year, Bangladesh's expatriates' welfare ministry ran good publicity that it would be able to send workers to Saudi Arabia at the end of the year. And a Saudi team visited Dhaka in April that year.
But that possibility has shrunk as the Saudi authorities have apparently started showing apathy to hire workers from Bangladesh by signing two agreements with India and Sri Lanka.
The Kingdom signed the agreements in January to hire domestic workers. It also plans to sign similar agreements with several other coun-
tries like Indonesia, Nepal, Vietnam and Cambodia in the near future.
"We are discussing with the Saudi government the challenges and possibilities of the sector,” said Bangladesh Ambassador in Riyadh Shahidul Islam over the phone.
Maj Gen Mohammad Ashab Uddin, Bangladesh ambassador to Kuwait, said it was difficult to say when the authorities would open its market for Bangladeshis.
"There is very limited employment opportunity for foreigners here as the total number of expatriates has already crossed that of the Kuwaitis,” he added.
These three countries, however, have continued to recruit manpower from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
According to the RMMRU, a research organisation on manpower export, these ME countries didn't impose any restriction on the other three South Asian nations as they strictly regulate the recruitment process.
Besides, the migration costs in these countries are almost half that in Bangladesh, it said.