Diplomatic efforts on to regularise them

State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam yesterday said the government is working on to regularise undocumented Bangladeshi migrant workers in Malaysia, to help them enter into the formal job market there.

“We have nearly 800,000 Bangladeshis in Malaysia. A large number of them were irregular migrants. But through diplomatic efforts we have made sure that the government of Malaysia regularises them,” he said.

He was addressing a workshop on “Impact of Migration on Poverty and Local Development” organised by the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) in the capital's Cirdap auditorium.

The state minster said officials at Bangladesh High Commission in the Southeast country are working day and night, as every day almost 10,000 Bangladeshis are visiting the mission office to update their papers.

“Once they are regularised, they will enter into the formal job market and their income will also increase,” he further said.

He added that the Awami League-led government has taken migration very seriously as the ruling party made a pledge in its 2008 election manifesto that it would make migration “affordable, cheaper, secured and dignified”.

The country's economy is largely dependent on three particular pillars, and remittance of expatriate migrant workers is one of them, he mentioned.

RMMRU Chair Prof Tasneem Siddiqui said the workshop was arranged to share preliminary findings of a survey with different stakeholders before preparing a complete report which will be published in June.

RMMRU with the help of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation conducted the survey in 2017 to compare livelihoods of expatriate migrants, internal migrants, and non-migrants in 20 districts with the findings of a similar study conducted in 17 of the districts in 2014.

Yesterday, findings of 15 districts were disclosed. It says the income of expatriate migrant workers was higher than that of the internal migrants and non-migrants.

The RMMRU findings say remittance of both male and female migrant workers increased nominally between 2014 and 2017 with male migrants remitted Tk 183,045 annually and their female counterparts remitted Tk 118,950.

However, remittance as a fraction of total income of both male and female workers has reduced in the last three years. In 2014, male migrants remitted 54 percent of their income. In 2017, they sent 51 percent. In 2014, women sent 63 percent of total income, now it has reduced to 54 percent, it says.

Income remained same for workers living in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Bahrain and Jordan. Monthly income increased for those who live in the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon and Singapore, according to the preliminary findings. It also says migration cost for male workers increased substantially while it decreased for females in the last three years.