BANGLADESH and Malaysia decided to allow all licensed recruiting agencies of Bangladesh to send workers to the Southeast Asian country, following allegations of a syndicate of 10 agents monopolising labour recruitment since early 2017. The decision came in a meeting between Bangladesh Expatriates’ Welfare Minister Nurul Islam and Malaysia’s Human Resources Minister M Kulasegaran in Putrajaya, the administrative capital of Malaysia.
The new Malaysian government had cancelled the previous online recruitment system, SPPA, with effect from September 1 following reports of the collusion between members of the syndicate. On June 22, The Star, a Malaysian newspaper, reported that an organised syndicate of 10 agents, led by a Bangladeshi businessman with alleged political links with the Malaysian home ministry, raked in at least two billion Malaysian ringgits (around Tk 4,000 crore) from 100,000 Bangladeshi workers in just two years. Considering that two lakh workers were recruited through the syndicate until suspension of the SPPA, the amount of money raked in would be Tk 8,000 crore.
On August 14, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that the syndicate had resulted in a monopolistic situation, with some charging as high as RM20,000 from each prospective worker. He had then said that all the Bangladeshi agents would be allowed to recruit workers.
Problems remain with the statement as it made no mention of the recruitment cost–the easiest way to rip off workers. According to the former Joint Secretary of BAIRA it would not cost more than 1.6 lakh. The problem with this statement is that it does not cost more than Tk 40,000 to go to Malaysia–so it is obvious that costs for our workers are highly inflated compared to other countries.
It costs on average only Tk 100 000 for workers in other countries like India and the Phillipines to be hired in Malaysia — so why should Bangladeshi workers pay 60 percent more than the prevailing rate of other countries? It is nothing but a blatant way to rip-off our workers whose hard earned foreign currency props up our exchange rate and stabilises our balance of payments — a key macro economic indicator.
While the 1 lakh taka is much lower than the 4 lakh prevailing from 2016-2018 it is still too much for our workers, who often have to sell their valuable possessions like land and property to go abroad. At least for their sake our Expatriates Ministry should lower the rate to enable more of them to go to Malaysia to earn money which is a major component of our economy.
