Manpower export again from Jan
Workers will go to Malaysia under state arrangements from January after the government signs three Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) with the Malaysian government, said the secretary of expatriates welfare and overseas employment.
An MoU on employment of workers with Malaysia was scheduled to be signed today, but it was deferred as the Malaysian authorities asked Bangladesh to sign two more MoUs on human trafficking prevention and inter-state crimes prevention respectively, Secretary Zafar Ahmed Khan added.
“We hope workers' recruitment in Malaysia will start early next year as the government has agreed to sign all the MoUs once those are approved by the home ministry,” the secretary told The Daily Star.
He said a delegation would go to Kuala Lumpur to sign the MoUs on November 26. Then the government might begin selection procedure for workers' recruitment from December.
The cabinet last month approved a proposal to sign an MoU on employment of workers with Malaysia. Under that MoU the cost will be maximum Tk 40,000 to for a jobseeker to get a job in Malaysia.
The government held detailed talks with Malaysian Human Resources Minister Dr S Subramaniam in Dhaka in September this year for the recruitment under state arrangements.
Once started, the recruitment will end a nearly four-year Malaysian ban issued in 2009 due to middlemen's irregularities in sending workers to that country.
The government favours state arrangements to put an end to the middlemen's meddling in this regard.
According to the government, five lakh workers would be sent to Malaysia in next five years under state arrangements with 50,000 workers flying to Malaysia every six months.
The government will prepare a database of potential workers so that it could train them and provide them with orientation on Malaysian laws, culture and language, added the secretary.
The Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), Dhaka's regulatory authority for overseas labour affairs, will manage the entire recruitment process aimed at checking malpractices rampant in the sector.
Begum Shamsoon Nahar, director general of BMET, said they would solicit applications from the workers online at the directive of the government.
The workers will be selected maintaining district quotas based on the requirements of the recruiters, she added. All financial transactions would be made through banks so that no scope for cheating arises.
Though the government had earlier said the recruiting company would bear the airfares, the jobseekers would have to bear it now, she added.
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