No manipulation in hiring process of Bangladeshi workers for Malaysia

Newly appointed Minister for Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Nurul Islam yesterday said no one could exert any influence on him over the process of hiring Bangladeshi workers for Malaysia.

“Nobody can buy me,” he said when reporters sought his reaction to an allegation that some Malaysian IT companies and their lobbies within Bangladesh's recruitment industry were manipulating him into using their respective online system for the recruitment.

 The minister had emerged from a meeting with a Malaysian delegation, which is visiting Dhaka to discuss the possible mode of labour recruitment, at his ministry.

On August 9, the four-member Malaysian team, led by the country's Immigration Department Secretary-general Mustafa Ibrahim, came to Bangladesh. It is scheduled to leave today.

Yesterday, a ministry official told The Daily Star that business delegations of Bestinet and Real Times Networking -- two Malaysian IT companies -- also met the minister and some ministry officials this week to show them their online systems for the purpose.

According to Malaysiakini, a Malaysian online news portal, Abdul Hakim Hamidi, executive chairperson of Real Time Networking Sdn Bhd, is a brother of the country's Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

On the other hand, Bestinet is owned by Malaysia's former home minister Azmi Khalid. Bestinet's agreement with the Malaysian government was suspended earlier this year following an outcry by recruitment agents of Indonesia and Nepal over the company's high service fees, the portal reported yesterday.

The expatriates' welfare ministry official also said the Bangladesh side, during the meeting, demanded that the cost of labour migration be low and the process safe to avoid the repetition of the situation in 2007-08.

During those years, excessive workers, hired against “fake” demands, were either jobless or forced to work with little or no pay. Hundreds of Bangladeshi manpower brokers were involved in the process, hiking each worker's migration cost to Tk 1.6 lakh to Tk 2.4 lakh against the government-fixed rate of Tk 84,000.

The expatriate minister yesterday said the two sides were yet to finalise any mode of the labour recruitment or the migration cost. He also said more discussions were required.

“However, apart from the private sector, workers can also go to Malaysia through the G2G [government-to-government] system,” he said.

He also advised all not to pay any broker for jobs in the Southeast Asian country. 

Nurul said the government this time was more serious to ensure a disciplined system for sending workers to Malaysia so that no one would be exploited.

“Whether it is G2G or B2B [business-to-business] arrangements, there will be a service centre in Malaysia. After workers' arrival there, the centre will take them to the company concerned,” the minister said.

Plantation, factory, construction, housekeeping, babysitting are the major sectors where Malaysia wants to recruit Bangladeshi workers, he said.

The four-member Malaysian delegation came to Dhaka after the country's home minister in June declared that they would recruit 1.5 million Bangladeshi workers in next three years through the B2B system.

After nearly a four-year ban in 2009 following massive labour abuses in 2007-08 through private sector recruitment, Malaysia resumed hiring Bangladeshi workers through government arrangements in 2012.

However, until now only some 10,000 Bangladeshis were recruited for the country's plantation sector. The other sectors are yet to be opened for Bangladesh.