NEWS reports on Sunday said foreign nationals are getting preference in local job markets at the cost of the locals. The disclosure said even where efficient and skilled local manpower is available; jobs are going to foreign nationals causing local joblessness to multiply. In poultry sector where at least 6,000 Bangladeshi manpower, basically trained in veterinary medicines are coming out every year, some local employers are employing Indians offering fat monthly salary. The same is equally true in textile and garment sector where factory owners employ foreigners to fill up technical vacancies but in doing so they also discriminate the locals.
What appears highly disturbing is the fact that the concerned government agencies are not having the total statistics on such sensitive issue in Bangladesh job market. The formal figure shows there are only 16,500 registered foreigners working legally in the country with permission from the Board of Investment, Export Processing Zones Authorities and NGO Bureau. But the Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD) figure quoting a study it carried out in 2015 said 5 lakh Indians are working in the country while labour leaders believe the number of foreign workers is around one million here.
Many wonder why the government is not taking the issue seriously although its consequences are enormous in the job market and in terms of loss of government revenue. The National Board of Revenue (NBR) is trying to collect the figure of illegal workers in local factories but in absence of cooperation from employers, the attempt had so far failed to achieve target. The CPD figure suggests Indians working in Bangladesh send over $ 3.76 billion equivalent of Taka 30,000 crore annually and almost all of them are unaccounted workers evading payment of income tax. Bangladesh is India’s 5th highest source of remittances. The Telecommunication Sector is one where Indians are overcrowding. And not only Indians, people from 55 other countries are working in the country’s job market including China, South Korea, Taiwan and host of others.
We don’t know why the government is allowing this mismanagement of the country’s job market when our younger people are suffering from joblessness and risking lives in desperate move to go to countries like Malaysia and in the Middle East. Many died last year in Thai jungles and Andaman Sea being misled by human traffickers and question immediately arises when our economy is creating enough jobs why our young people must step into uncertainly seeking jobs abroad.
What Bangladesh needs now is to train its manpower, as efficient managers and skilled workers and technicians. Our labour policy must be equally refocused to find jobs to the locals first and the government must protect the job markets accordingly. We can’t afford to mismanage the labour market keeping our youths unemployed.
