Malaysia home minister to visit Dhaka Feb 1-2 over labour recruitment

Malaysian Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail will be visiting Bangladesh on February 1-2 as Dhaka expects to dismantle the syndicate of labour recruitment in Malaysia.

"We want the cartel to be dismantled and the recruitment cost reduced, and the rules of recruitment eased," Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen told reporters at the foreign ministry today.

The new hope is there as Malaysia got the new administration led by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who promised reforms in the economic sector including foreign workers management.

Bangladesh has frozen intake of labour recruitment in September 2018 for the presence of a strong syndicate that monopolised the recruitment, and its cost went as high as Tk 400,000.

Last year, the recruitment began in a limited scale, but the cartel was still active, and the recruitment cost is very high.

Momen said the Malaysian home minister is coming to Dhaka with an objective of easing the labour recruitment.

Asked about the registration process started by Bangladesh for the Rohingyas who were displaced by the conflicts in Tambru border in Naikhangchhari recently, Momen said, "We are not inhumane. We are the best when it comes to humanitarian gestures. No country in the region sheltered the 11 lakh Rohingyas but we did."