Govt framing rules to stop cheating of overseas job seekers
The government has decided in principle to make it mandatory for recruiting agencies to select overseas job seekers from the databank of Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) in a bid to check fraudulent practices by manpower brokers.
“We have decided to frame rules so that middlemen cannot woo job seekers from villages on behalf of recruiting agencies which are usually stationed in the cities, mainly Dhaka, and cheat potential workers,” said a high official of the expatriates welfare and overseas employment ministry.
The decision has been taken as a lot of underhand and undocumented monetary transactions take place through these middlemen causing heavy losses to migrant workers.
The idea gained momentum in the wake of sufferings of workers who recently returned from Malaysia because of unemployment and underpayment.
The workers claimed that they had paid Tk 2 lakh to Tk 2.3 lakh to middlemen and recruiting agencies for going to Malaysia but now the agencies claim they had received only Tk 84,000 each from the workers.
Secretary (in-charge) of the expatriates welfare ministry Abdul Matin Chowdhury said the decision to frame rules followed several meetings of committees formed to bring about reforms in the manpower sector.
Migrants' rights bodies and experts have long been demanding that the government either cancel the middleman system in manpower business or legalise it as job seekers in most cases were cheated by middlemen in the process of securing jobs abroad.
According to various studies on manpower business, middlemen both at home and in manpower importing countries including Malaysia and some in the Middle East gobble up a major portion of the money that the poor job seekers pay for migrating to a foreign land.
Many of the workers who sell lands, cows, other belongings and even borrow from money lenders at high rates of interest to go abroad for jobs cannot ultimately benefit because of paying big amounts of money as cost of getting the jobs, and poor wages.
An official of the expatriates' welfare ministry said there is a database at the BMET but job seekers' names are now entered there only when recruiting agencies (who have different layers of middlemen both in rural and urban areas) convince them about sending those people abroad.
“We have now decided that names and other information of overseas job seekers must be preserved in the database. When recruiting agencies come up with employment opportunities, BMET will provide them with information regarding required number of job seekers. And the agencies will then select them through interviews,” the official said requesting anonymity.
The ministry has already asked Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology to prepare a user-friendly software for this purpose, he mentioned.
The government will also set a mechanism to ensure that recruiting agencies select job seekers also from districts that have fewer people working abroad. The ministry has already issued instructions to the agencies in this regard.
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