KL defers new deal on labour recruitment

The expatriate welfare ministry yesterday withdrew the draft agreement on labour recruitment in Malaysia from the cabinet following a request from the Southeast Asian country.  

“The draft of the Memorandum of Understating for sending workers to Malaysia under the G2G Plus system was withdrawn as it is yet to be finalised,” Cabinet Secretary M Shafiul Alam told reporters after the weekly cabinet meeting at the secretariat.

The deal was drafted last week after series of talks between Dhaka and Kuala Lumpur in recent months.

Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, in a letter on Friday, requested Bangladesh Expatriate Welfare Minister Nurul Islam to incorporate the “selected Malaysian company's proposal” in the draft MoU, said a ministry official.

Some six lakh Bangladeshi workers are currently employed in Malaysia. The Southeast nation in June announced that it would recruit 1.5 million more in the next three years.

According to the draft of the Government-to-Government Plus (G2G Plus) MoU, Malaysia would employ Bangladeshi workers in construction, plantation, industries and service sectors.

Currently, it recruits Bangladeshis only for plantation sector under the G2G system. Some 10,000 were hired in the last two years.

Following the declaration in June, several Malaysian companies allegedly lobbied the two governments to win contracts for management and monitoring of the recruitment system, according to media reports.

There were complaints that relatives of Malaysian ministers were backing the companies. Malaysian outsourcing firm Synerflux was short-listed by Malaysian government for processing workers' recruitment.

However, Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agency (Baira) opposed the move saying that Synerflux would “monopolise” the recruitment.

“We want that all the recruiting agencies would be involved in the recruitment,” Baira President Abul Basher told The Daily Star.

Although the name of Synerflux was not mentioned in the draft of the G2G Plus deal, it stated that a Malaysian outsourcing company would manage the recruitment, said ministry sources.

Migrant rights groups said there were flaws in the existing labour recruitment system which resulted in labour abuses. 

OTHER MEETING ISSUES

The cabinet yesterday also approved the draft of the Local Government (Municipality) (Amendment) Act-2015. Under the proposed law, a candidate, except for the independent contestants, will have to be nominated by a political party for contesting the municipality elections.

Cabinet Secretary Shafiul said an amendment has been incorporated in the law to replace the words “political party” with “registered political party”.

The meeting gave the nod to the draft of the Insurance Corporation Act-2015.

About the trial in Rajon and Rakib murder cases, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told the cabinet that the sensational cases should be disposed of promptly as delay in trails deprived people of justice, said meeting sources.

Two courts in Sylhet and Khulna on Sunday handed down the death penalty to six people for the brutal killings of the teen boys. The incidents sparked outrage all over the country.