With the opening of new markets, a record number of Bangladeshi nationals went abroad with jobs so far in the outgoing calendar year.
Bangladesh sent more than 1.0 million people in the first 11 months of 2022, officials said, expecting the number to increase further in the upcoming year (2023).
Bangladesh resumed sending workers to Malaysia this year, which is considered to be a major development for this sector in the outgoing year despite the pace of outgoing manpower to the destination still remaining slower than expected.
Another major development was that the country has already signed an agreement with Greece to export manpower while holding talks with countries like Albania, Malta and Bosnia to explore possibilities of manpower export.
Bangladesh also has started sending manpower to Cam-bodia, Uzbekistan, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Japan, China, Croatia, Senegal, and Burundi in recent years.
Md Shahidul Alam, director general (DG) of the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), has expected overseas employment to grow by 20 per cent in 2023.
He said Malaysian employers are gradually increasing recruitment from Bangladesh while job opportunities are also opening up increasingly in different regions, including European countries.
"Therefore, Bangladesh would be able to send more workers abroad in the next year," he added.
According to experts, there were different reasons behind the lower inflow of remittance that included widespread use of 'Hundi'. Bangladesh Bank registered S21.03 billion in wage earners' remittance in fiscal
year (FY) 2021-22, much lower than that of $24.78 billion in 2020-21.
In the first five months (July-November) of the current FY, the wage earners sent home $8.79 billion.
Like the previous years, the workers continued to face problems like higher migration cost and maltreatment by the recruiters in the process of migration.
Many workers also remained jobless, especially in Saudi Arabia, the largest job destination for Bangladeshi Workers.
Risky journey to Europe via the Mediterranean also increased by around 80 per cent in the outgoing year compared to the previous year with more than 14,000 Bangladeshis have taken this adventurous journey this year alone as against 7,838 people in 2021, according to a latest report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
It says that in the first 11 months of 2022 (January-November), some 94,343 people - 15 per cent Bangladeshis - migrated to Italy by sea.
Shakirul Islam, chairman of Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program (OKUP), said the number has increased but it deserves scrutiny to see whether they have got jobs. Apart from this, transparency in the migration process could not be ensured yet.
For Malaysia, even though migration cost has been fixed at Tk 78,000, the workers have to spend an amount ranging between Tk 400,000 and Tk 500,000 each, he said.
Services for workers also have not been improved adequately in the Bangladesh missions abroad, and other departments, he said, adding that many workers in Saudi Arabia have not found jobs and many had to return while many others were working hard for survival.
Besides, there were scanty job opportunities especially for the educated ones in the country, prompting the young people to take a risky route to Europe, he added.
The government should take a proper policy to bring good governance in this sector so that real benefits could be derived in the future, the OKUP chairman observed.
When asked, the BMET chief Shahidul Alam said they were working on ensuring safe migration.
The government is emphasising on migration of skilled manpower, and it has set up 25 more technical training centres across the country this year. "We hope it would yield at least 10 per cent more migration of skilled manpower in the New Year," he said.
The government has also made it mandatory for the out-bound workers to open a bank account for sending home their hard-earned remittances. Besides, it launched an awareness campaign to encourage sending money through official channels.
Mr Alam also suggested taking a pragmatic decision by the central bank to encourage remittance inflow.
A total of 617,209 Bangladeshi nationals found jobs in 2021. About 14 million people went abroad from the country since 1976, the BMET statistics showed.
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