Govt to ease migration process

The government intends to set a reasonable point of reference for migration costs and make registration mandatory for jobseekers abroad in a bid to make the migration process more robust.
The decision was taken yesterday at the first meeting of the cabinet committee led by Finance Minister AMA Muhith on skills development, manpower export and remittance.
The committee was formed in May 2012 with the aim to stop the harassment faced by migrant workers and, particularly, to increase remittance inflow, which stood at $14.3 billion in fiscal 2012-13.
Muhith told the meeting that the committee would prepare a guideline which will help the next government to carry forward the issues.
At the meeting, a report identifying about 24 problematic areas was placed, foremost among which is the absence of an official estimate of migration costs to countries other than Malaysia.
“The Baira (Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies) has not set a benchmark. It was decided that a benchmark will be prepared on a government-to-government level and the private recruiting agencies would work around that,” said a meeting source.
The labour counsellors in Bangladesh embassies will also publish booklets highlighting how much money may be required to go to the concerned country.
The paper also made several recommendations, one of which include a database for jobseekers.
“Those seeking jobs abroad will have to get their names registered and a computer database for them will be prepared. Workers will be selected on random from the database and they would be sent abroad at a low cost.”
Registration, however, will be made mandatory for workers seeking jobs abroad in the proposed Foreign Employment and Migration Act, 2013, due to be passed in the current session of parliament.
Already seven lakh people wishing to migrate have registered themselves, of them 1.4 lakh are women, the paper said.
The report also suggested a classification of the private recruiting agencies on the basis of performance such that migrant workers can easily identify the good agencies and avert being cheated out of their hard-earned funds.
The committee also placed various plans in the meeting for sending skilled workers abroad.
The finance ministry will take an initiative to coordinate three skills development projects financed by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the European Commission.