Chosen aspirants to get training

The government yesterday went a step ahead in sending Bangladeshi workers to Malaysia under state arrangements as it picked 11,758 job seekers by a lottery for medical check-up.
The online registration for the selection of job seekers ended on Monday without any major difficulties.
A total of 14,42,776 people in seven divisions registered their names at the union information service centres between January 13 and January 21.
Initially, 36,038 people were selected through computerised lotteries from all the registrants.
Upon completion of medical check-up, 10,000 workers will be selected. They will undergo a 10-day training before leaving for Malaysia.
The training will begin in the first week of next month at 13 technical training centres across the country, said Begum Shamsoon Nahar, director general of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET).
Meanwhile, a 14-member Malaysian team arrived in Dhaka yesterday to discuss the progress in recruiting Bangladeshi workers. The team will meet Expatriates' Welfare Minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain today.
Yesterday, the minister expressed optimism about sending the first batch of job seekers to Malaysia by the end of next month or in early March.
“We urge people not to enter any deal with any middlemen to go to Malaysia as they will be sent there under government arrangements,” he told a lottery function at his ministry.
The migration costs for each worker will not exceed Tk 40,000 including medical check-up, training and one-way air fare, mentioned Mosharraf.
Though the government had earlier fixed the migration costs at Tk 85,000, private recruiting agencies used to charge each worker at least Tk 2 to 3 lakh.
Due to such anomalies in the manpower recruitment process, the Malaysian government in 2009 had stopped recruiting Bangladeshi workers.
On November 29 last year, Kuala Lumpur and Dhaka inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to recruit Bangladeshi workers under state arrangements.
A month later, the Malaysian government formally asked the Bangladesh government to send 10,000 workers for its plantation sector.
Although many doubted the success of the government's move, the country's private recruiting agencies' platform Baira has finally welcomed the initiative.
Ali Haider Chowdhury, general secretary of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (Baira), said the government has successfully reopened the Malaysian job market to Bangladeshi workers.
“The government has achieved success as around 15 lakh people have already registered for jobs abroad,” he told The Daily Star.
Ali hoped that the government would work jointly with the private sector to boost the country's manpower export.