Poorer pay for Bangladeshi expat workers

The Ninth Global Forum on Migration and Development Summit taking place in Dhaka has revealed some unpalatable truths about the problems Bangladeshi expatriate workers are facing in Malaysia. Around 400,000 are legally employed in construction and plantation sectors. There is however some 200,000 more working there illegally and they are subject to much poorer pay and are under constant threat of deportation. Although we signed a government-to-government deal with Malaysia, the push was on mitigating migration costs and not securing higher pay, resulting in employers paying the bare minimum wage. This situation allows Malaysian employers to pay a documented Bangladeshi worker 1,000MR (Malaysian Ringitt) before tax as opposed to a Filipino worker earning 1,200MR per month. 

The situation gets much worse for those workers who are working in that country illegally. Employers are bound by law to pay a lot of costs for taking Bangladeshi workers legally and hence there is a large demand for undocumented workers. The problem with law enforcement there is that the agencies are very active at apprehending and deporting these workers, but there is no action against the employers. This remains a major headache. Unless something can be done to make employers accountable for unscrupulous activity, it will be impossible to check the flow of illegal labour from the country. At our end, we need to negotiate better salaries and benefits for our workers with the Malaysian government. There also remains a dire need to enforce strict guidelines for local licensed recruiters in Bangladesh, which if violated would have their licenses revoked.