Fate of 20,000 Bangladeshis in Malaysia uncertain

Fate of around 20,000 Bangladeshi jobseekers, who have yet to avail passports from the Bangladesh mission in Kuala Lumpur, has become uncertain as the Malaysian government's deadline to appeal for regularisation ended yesterday.
"Yes, there is some sort of uncertainty for those who did not secure their passports. We hope Malaysia will extend the deadline because it has a huge shortage of labour," Bangladesh's labour attaché Mantu Kumar Biswas told The Daily Star over phone yesterday.
Ayubur Rahman, a Bangladeshi worker in Kuala Lumpur, said many working in faraway places from the Bangladesh High Commission might have not known about the deadline and did not apply.
Besides, the mission made it mandatory for the workers to be physically present for interview to secure passports. But these workers could be dependent on brokers and could be cheated, he added. The high commission put in place the arrangement to check fraudulence by the brokers who abuse passports in various forms and defraud the migrants.
Asked about this, Mantu Kumar said the high commission publicised the deadline for regularisation through newspapers and community meetings. It also urged all to make sure that all those who registered get their passports in time.
Starting from August 1 last year, around 2.68 lakh irregular Bangladeshi workers got registered with the Malaysian immigration under the amnesty programme aimed at allowing them to return home without any penalty or get regularised. The regularisation process started on October 15.
The migrants found it an immense opportunity, as they had been fleeing or facing arrests or harassments for not having work permits or passports.
Of those who got registered, around 2.25 lakh Bangladeshi workers applied to the high commission for passports. As of January 9, nearly 2.2 lakh were issued passports, informed Mantu Kumar.
Around 5,000 fortune-seekers returned home without facing any penalty, while 21,000 had passports, but not valid work permits. This means around 17,000 Bangladeshi workers did not apply for the passports.
Mantu Kumar could not say for sure the number of Bangladeshi workers who already got regularised or applied for it to the Malaysian immigration.
Malaysia is home to around 5 lakh Bangladeshi workers. The Southeast Asian nation froze recruitment from Bangladesh in early 2009 on the plea of economic recession, though experts in the sector believe it was because of malpractices in the recruitment system.
The present government is trying to reopen the labour market since assuming power.
Insiders at the expatriates' welfare and overseas employment ministry say the country will come up with any new decision only after making an assessment of the labour needs of Malaysia.
"The government actually wanted that the irregular workers have a chance to work and earn, because many of them were cheated in jobs earlier," a ministry official observed.