Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh looks for alternative job market abroad as job opportunity in traditional markets drastically shrinks in the recent times.
Besides, a large number of migrant workers are returning to Bangladesh from various countries every year forcing the authorities to search for new markets for manpower export.
In this context, the government initially has set a target to send manpower to six countries–Cambodia, Poland, China, Rumania, Croatia and Seychelles.
The information was disclosed on Tuesday at a meeting of the parliamentary standing committee on expatriates welfare and overseas employment held at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban.
The Jatiya Sangsad body asked the ministry to take necessary initiatives, by Bangladesh missions abroad, to increase diplomatic efforts to stop possible reduction of job markets there, said a press release.
The committee also suggested the ministry to take necessary steps of resending the expatriates who had returned to Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The meeting was presided over by the committee chairman Anisul Islam Mahmud while Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment minister Imran Ahmad, committee members M Ali Ashraf, Mouazzam Hossain Ratan, Ayesha Ferdaus and Pankaj Dev Nath attended among others.
“We have no alternative but to explore new manpower export markets when major overseas labour markets were closed, and job opportunity in traditional markets has shrunken,” Secretary General of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) Shamim Ahmed Chowdhury told The New Nation. He said manpower exporters want sturdy government initiative to open up new job markets abroad for Bangladeshi nationals.
Insiders said, more than 600,000 Bangladeshi workers staying abroad without valid documents amid coronavirus outbreak. Many Bangladeshi workers, now stranded in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Lebanon, Bahrain and the Maldives, will be deported gradually.
Half of them are staying in Saudi Arabia alone. Factors like so-called free visa, overstaying and cheating by manpower recruiters have made the workers undocumented, they said.
Moreover, thousands are retuning every month from abroad for various reasons, such as job cut due to Covid-19 and expiry of visas or Akamas, he added.
A total of 70,427 workers have returned to Bangladesh from various countries in the last four and half months, according to data from the Expatriates’ Welfare Desk at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
“A total of 70,427 workers returned home from 23 countries between April 1 and August 18, 2020. Among them, 67,119 are male and 3,308 are female,” said Assistant Director of the Expatriates’ Welfare Desk Md Fakhrul Alam.
According to the data, the highest number of workers returned from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
A total of 23,502 workers have returned from the UAE, 12,950 from Saudi Arabia, 7,759 from Maldives, 7,329 from Kuwait, 3,645 from Oman, 1,382 from Singapore, 746 from Bahrain, 71 from South Africa, 6,068 from Qatar, 1,838 from Malaysia, 100 from South Korea, 20 from Thailand, 39 from Myanmar, 481 from Jordan, 1,419 from Iraq, 122 from Vietnam, 80 from Sri Lanka, 151 from Italy, 444 from Lebanon, 100 from Russia, 20 from Mauritius and 40 from Cambodia.
Besides, more than 100,000 Bangladeshi workers were sent back from abroad last year due to a host of reasons such as overstay and scarce jobs.
Of the total, some 62,000 workers were deported from different countries in the Middle East. More than 50,000 were also sent back from Malaysia under its “Back 4 Good” programme.
