The sole government recruiter for expatriate workers BOESL (Bangladesh Overseas Employment Services Limited), has worked out revised fees and charges for outbound workers. This revision of expenses has been six years in the making and it should reduce migration cost for workers (both skilled and unskilled) to nine countries, which are, Kuwait, Jordan, Seychelles, Croatia, Mauritius, Bulgaria, Australia, Fiji and Russia. While it has become decidedly cheaper to go to certain destinations, like Jordan, some destinations like Mauritius and Croatia have become dearer.
Nevertheless, historical data show that workers going to expatriate labour markets through the BOESL always spend less than what is charged by the private operators. Not only that, workers who use the services of the government agency are assured of proper employment contracts and other papers, which has seldom been the case with private recruiters. These recruitment agencies have had a free run in the market because there is no viable option for the hundreds of thousands of people who go abroad to work every year. These agencies operate like a mafia and behave as though they are above the law. In many cases, they have been above the law and successive governments have failed to rein in their illicit operations. Since there is hardly any point in trying to discipline a sector which refuses to be disciplined, the best bet for the government is to strengthen BOESL so that this significant mass of people who brave great odds to go work outside the country and earn the national exchequer billions of dollars in inbound remittances, may go and work and earn in peace.
BOESL should be commended for taking the initiative to introduce employment permit system (EPS) and revising rates downward so that workers may recover their investment cost. The standard rate is based on a worker's migration cost being equivalent to three months' salary. Hence, through BOESL, if jobs are guaranteed at the other end and where employers treat workers humanely, it should become a priority for policymakers to expand the scope of BOESL's work so that new markets can be explored, and existing labour markets improved for Bangladeshi expatriate workers.
Any expansion or upgrading of BOESL operations will be met with seismic-level resistance from the private recruiters' network. Instead of putting up with resistance to change for the better, private recruiters should stop milking hapless rural people dry through fraudulence. For too long the people of the land have been cheated out of their savings to end up in a foreign land or be abandoned there without valid papers or work contracts. Countless families have lost it all, as the cost of migration via private recruiting agencies often outweighed what these workers earned abroad.
If the EPM (employers' pay model) system can be successfully introduced in the various international labour markets (where our workers go), then it will inevitably bring down migration costs to tolerable levels. EPM is where employers bear all costs of workers. This has already happened in the case of Malaysia, which is recruiting 10,000 workers for its plantations. Now that a precedence exists, it is time to use this experience in accelerating BOESL's work by manning it properly and giving it the budgetary allocations needed. Bangladesh is in dire need of foreign exchange, and any recruitment through BOESL can also make it mandatory for expatriate workers to send their money through official channels. There is no reason why BOESL cannot succeed given the right policy support.