International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has taken an initiative to ensure international standardisation of manpower recruitment agencies to facilitate an ethical recruitment system for Bangladeshi workers.
To this effect, the United Nations (UN) migration agency organised a workshop on 'Ethical Recruitment Practice and International Recruitment Integrity System (IRIS)' at a city hotel on Thursday.
Government officials, representatives from various international organisations, manpower recruiters, and media personnel, among others, were present at the programme.
The Recruitment Agent Rules and the Recruitment Agent Classification System under the Overseas Employment and Migrants Act 2013 are at a draft stage. So, the UN agency wants to keep reflection of IRIS in the classification system to make it an internationally-recognised one.
During a presentation on IRIS, Lara White, senior labour migration and human development specialist of IOM, said the current recruitment model is focused more on the employers rather than the workers.
In many cases the recruitment agencies re-coup their money from the workers rather than from the employers.
Migrant workers are always vulnerable to exploitation in different ways including high migration cost, lack of access to justice, employer-specific work permits, fear of deportation, and language and cultural barriers.
They also have little bargaining power in terms of what and how much they get.
Furthermore, if several agencies and brokers are involved in the recruitment process, it can even cause further rise in fees and costs for the workers, she also mentioned.
The IRIS principles include respect for laws, fundamental principles and rights at work, ethical and professional conduct, prohibition of realising recruitment fees from jobseekers, and freedom of movement etc.
Other principles are transparency of terms and conditions of employment, respect for confidentiality and data protection, and access to remedy.
The IRIS standard is developed in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, according to the presentation.
Rahnuma Salam Khan, officer in-charge at ILO Migration Project, gave another presentation on the draft rules on classification of recruiting agencies under the act.
She said the government may classify the recruitment agents in various grades, which can be done on the basis of evaluation of the conditions that must be met by the recruitment agents.
The factors to be considered while classifying the recruitment agents into various grades under this section will be prescribed by the rules, she added.
Rownaq Jahan, secretary in-charge at Ministry of Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment (MoEWOE), was the chief guest at the programme.
She also said the government is working to ensure an ethical recruitment system to eliminate exploitation of the migrant workers.
The workers are facing different types of problems, including extra migration cost, non-payment of wages, abuses, and unpleasant working environment etc, she added.
Shameem Ahmed Chowdhury Noman, secretary general of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA), said good governance is a must to ensure ethical recruitment. Otherwise, the proposed classification system will not be an effective one.
Giorgi Gigauri, mission chief of IOM Bangladesh, gave the welcome address at the programme. Nazibul Islam, additional secretary of MoEWOE, among others, also spoke at the event.
