Star Business Report

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Economists yesterday suggested the government formulate policies on creating skilled workforce for different sectors to reduce the huge amount of money being drained out of the country owing to hiring of foreigners.

Every year over $4 billion is remitted out of the country as salaries and allowances of foreign skilled workforce, said Rushidan Islam Rahman, executive chairperson of the Centre for Development and Employment Research (CDER).

“We are paying remittance for skilled foreign workers and Bangladesh is sending unskilled workers abroad. We need to formulate a policy to stop paying such a big amount of remittance by creating skilled workforce locally,” she said.

Rahman was speaking after presenting a paper on “Is Bangladesh over-dependent on overseas employment” at a discussion on the “Bangladesh Employment and Labour Market Watch 2019: Sector challenges and opportunities” at the Policy Research Institute (PRI) in Dhaka.

Economists, government high-ups, researchers and university professors attended the discussion.

Mainly chief executive officers and managers employed in local and multinational companies were taking away $5-6 billion every year as remittance, said M Syeduzzaman, a former finance minister.

The government allows foreign workers here to take away 75 percent of their salary as remittance, he said.

“We have to have some programmes to produce skilled workforce in order to reduce such big amounts of money being remitted out every year,” Syeduzzaman said.

Star

Planning Minister MA Mannan speaks at a discussion on the “Bangladesh Employment and Labour Market Watch 2019: Sector challenges and opportunities” at the Policy Research Institute (PRI) in Dhaka yesterday.