Overseas employment and attracting investors
Wajid Ali Khan Panni, Former Deputy Foreign Minister and High Commissioner
I was very happy to learn from the media that Malaysia has again opened their doors for workers from Bangladesh. However it is disturbing and worrying to note that the poor worker will need to spend about Tk 1 lakh to get this job. This indeed is a large sum and the worker will need one or two years to repay or get back their investment. Employers who need workers must pay the return airfare. The only charges which can be levied on the workers are the passport fees, medical examination fees and processing and agents commission which should not be more than Tk 10,000. Therefore I sincerely feel the total cost to a worker should be around Tk 25,000 to get a job in Malaysia.In the late 1980s' and early 1990's, when Malaysia had first opened its doors for workers from Bangladesh, some half a million workers had landed up in Malaysia. In the late 1990s it was found that several hundred thousand had been sent illegally or with false papers. Instead of deporting them, the Malaysian government gave them the opportunity to legalise their status and in 1997 the Bangladesh Mission in Kuala Lumpur had to issue over one lakh passports to get these workers legalised. On enquiry it was found out that these workers were brought to Malaysia on false papers and none of them had any passports on them. Very few passports were recovered. Most of these workers had paid large sums of money to get to Malaysia. It is rumoured that the recruiting agents are collecting money to send workers to Malaysia. I sincerely hope this time there will be no fraud committed and repeat of what had happened earlier. Malaysian entrepreneurs were keen to invest in Bangladesh and many big groups had registered with the Board of Investment. But very few have really come in to invest in Bangladesh. As High Commissioner of Bangladesh to Malaysia, I had gone around to various Business Chambers and Rotary Clubs and spoke on the investment policies of our country to encourage investors. I remember on one such occasion, after I spoke, at question time one of the members said that Prime Minister Mahathir had asked some of the business group to try and invest in Bangladesh, especially in labour intensive industries. He had visited Dhaka along with some other potential investors and did not find a congenial atmosphere to invest. In fact, he categorically said that the drive from the airport to the hotel had put them off. There was no law and rule of traffic and if that was the state of the traffic, they wondered how the other aspects of life would be. I would have thought that Indian business houses would have found Bangladesh a good place to invest, especially in consumer industries whereby, besides marketing the product in Bangladesh, these products could have been re-exported to their eastern states, in which case the pressure for transit facilities would have been less. In fact, I also tried to encourage some investors, of course not one of the Indian Giants, but failed to get them interested as they felt insecure. The recent problem with the RMG was worrying. Some quarters tried to blame our neighbouring country. None of these demonstrators were from there. These were local workers with their legitimate demands. India is a big country, fast growing, but certainly has poverty and large unemployment and although India thinks for India, and rightly so, trying to destroy our RMG industries will not necessarily benefit them. RMG buyers could always choose to go elsewhere, after all there are other places where this industry exists. The industry does import huge quantity of fabric and related things from Indiaa benefit which it does not want to lose. We need to have a good working relationship with our neighbour and must refrain from making statements which will strain our relationship.
|
|
