This robust inflow of remittance has raised the country's foreign currency reserve to $5,098 million, well above the safe threshold to meet three months' import bills. This is borne out by the near doubling of the country's foreign currency reserve in this period, through notably higher remittance inflow in the last few years.

The inflow of remittances in foreign currency by the expatriate Bangladeshis has increased substantially over the last few years, which is about 150 per cent. The remittance scenario 2001-06 reveals that inflow of remittance has been increasing at a faster rate. Remittances earned were $2.07 billion in 2001, $2.84 billion in 2002, $3.17 billion in 2003, $3.56 billion in 2004, $4.24 billion in 2005 and $4.92 billion in 2006.

About 4.8 million Bangladeshis are currently working in more than 100 countries around the world, prominently in Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore Jordan, Libya Lebanon, Germany, Australia, Iran, Japan, Italy and Spain. According to a latest statistics supplied by the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), a total number of 3,54,710 people left the country to join global job market, in the nine month of the fiscal 2006-07, that ended on June 30.

Money earned by the expatriate Bangladeshis is a prominent source of foreign currency for Bangladesh. Their earnings have not only brought prosperity to their families but also contributed immensely to boost the country's economy.

In order to afford just two meals for their families, they opt for any sort of jobs abroad by selling off their last plot of land to meet the high demand of the manpower agents. But even in that heart-rending deal many of these people did not get any job. Such fraudulent activities by the unscrupulous manpower agents are still going on unhindered, as they are not adequately taken to task by the government.

The recent nine million pound sterling scam of First Solution Money Transfer Limited has shaken the overseas money remitting system. It was an act of fraudulence by the private remittance of house, owned by some corrupt people close to the immediate former political regime.

Sonali Exchange, a subsidiary organisation of Sonali Bank dealing with remitting money from UK, was closed down in order to facilitate growth of such remittance houses.

The measures taken by the Bangladesh Bank and other commercial banks to encourage the migrant workers to remit their earnings back home through official channels, has suffered a big jolt.

First Solution scam has the potential of reversing the trend of using official channels by the migrant workers, as it has made them suspicious about the genuineness of such remittance houses.

Bangladeshi workers working in the Middle East had always found the services of hundi operators handy in sending their earnings back home. Obviously, they will again be inclined to the hundi operators for safe remittance of their hard earned money, as the First Solution scam had stroke them badly.

Some 86 institutions including the overseas braches of Bangladeshi banks are involved in the money-transfer to Bangladesh. Of those, First Solution remitted money from UK through eight Bangladeshi banks namely -- Islami Bank, Uttara Bank, Eastern Bank, Brac Bank, Prime Bank, National Credit and Commerce Bank, South East Bank and Mutual Trust Bank.

First Solution reportedly closed down all of its braches immediately after misappropriating 9 million pound sterling, remitted by the expatriate Bangladeshis.

Bangladesh Bank, the monetary watchdog, being wise after the big fraud made, engaged a team of consultant to draft a law that aims at protecting the migrant workers and their beneficiaries at home, from any possible exploitation by the remittance houses or their agents, which should have been done much earlier. Proposed laws should have provisions for making counterpart banks responsible for any act of fraudulence by the remittance houses abroad.

A big misery of our migrant workers is that they get lower salaries than the same category of workers of other countries. An unskilled Bangladeshi worker in the Middle East countries gets 300 to 500 riyals per month on an average, while the workers from Sri Lanka, Philippines and Pakistan get 700 to 800 riyals. Malpractices by the manpower recruiting agencies and lack of strong monitoring by the government are said to be responsible for it.

The speakers at a policy dialogue on safe migration and remittance jointly organised by The Daily Star and Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, held on June 10, urged the government to immediately ratify the 1990 UN Convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and their families. This is the first international document that provides assurance to the rights of the migrant workers. Signing the convention in October 1998, Bangladesh is yet to ratify it.

A recent study on 'Policy and Public Benefit Interventions to help Bangladesh achieve an annual migrant remittance of $ 30 billion per annum by 2015' by Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, suggested that the government should priorities skilled workers to command higher wages than the unskilled workers to remit more money back home.

According to the UN High Commission for Refugees, the number of migratory people across the world has exceeded two billion by the end of 2006 and the amount they remit back home every year is more than $300 billion. This money is three-folds of the total amount of aids given annually to the poor and least developed countries of the world.

The migrant workers of Bangladesh are not laggard any way. They have remitted nearly six billion dollars in a year. It indeed makes a sad commentary on the state of affairs of the concerned authorities, who have failed to ensure protection of minimum rights to our foreign currency earners, who are otherwise the 'ambassador of hope' to the nation.

Migrant workers often face a lot of trouble and harassment in the host countries and government policies are seldom directed to their needs.

One-third of the country's foreign currency earnings come from remittance. The Global Economic Perspective Reprot-2006 by the World Bank reveled that home-back remittance by the migrant workers has helped Bangladesh to cut its poverty by six per cent. Remittance has also accounted for nearly 35 per cent of our export earnings.

Bangladesh can cut its foreign aid dependence, reaching to the dream of earning $ 30 billion remittance per annum by 2015. To achieve this goal Bangladesh needs to develop a more diverse set of skills for its workers to tap potential job markets and also to make migration and remittance trouble free.

A.N.M. Nurul Haque is a columnist of The Daily Star.