Business Desk :
The Malaysian government wants ‘syndication’ in manpower export from Bangladesh, bypassing the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) the two countries signed last month to ensure open competition and transparency, with lower migration costs.
Malaysian Human Resource Minister M Saravanan in a letter on January 14 urged Bangladeshi counterpart Minister for Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Imran Ahmad to initiate the process of sending workers to Malaysia through 25 Bangladesh Recruitment Agencies (BRA), reports DT. Manpower exporters said the move is contrary to the spirit of negotiations reached between the two countries on manpower export to Malaysia which will result in obvious syndication and image crisis for the nation.
Despite repeated cautions from the Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry, the syndicate comprising of some officials and a few agencies is still active, said M Tipu Sultan, President of the Recruiting Agencies Oikya Parishad. Parishad leaders said a vested corrupt group in the Malaysian government had been in favor of syndication in Bangladesh to get equally benefitted. Recruiting agency owners demanded keeping the labour market open for all the valid recruiting agents to ensure fair competition. A number of recruiting agents said Nepal, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia are among other countries that send workers in Malaysia through open competition among their recruiting agencies. Indonesia has more than 1,000 recruiting agencies and Nepal’s 884 for sending manpower to Malaysia. There exists no priority list of recruiting firms for either country. Malaysian insistence for a smaller group of recruiting agencies in Bangladesh is mysterious, only indicating corruption in the entire process to benefit an influential quarter in the HR Ministry of Malaysia, believe experts.
Sending workers through a small number of firms will demean the government efforts and objectives of keeping the migration costs lower. The arrangement to send workers to Malaysia from Bangladesh through only 10 recruiting firms from 2017 to 2018 year was a disaster. Any repetition of syndication would be a double whammy for both the Bangladesh government and the economy.
As Bangladesh has nearly 2,000 valid manpower exporters, letting only 25 of them for the business will create only chaos and enhance migration-related costs.
Sources at the Ministry for Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment said they stood firm for open competition and against any sort of syndication in manpower export to Malaysia. “We responded to the letter of Saravanan upholding the spirit for open competition, as such term is included in the MoU,” a top official at the ministry told.
He said the provision of chapters C (v) and C (vi) of Appendix B of the MoU mentions open competition.
According to the provision, the Malaysian government shall select BRA automatically through the online system from the list provided by the Bangladesh government, and the Malaysian government shall ensure transparency and fairness in the selection and distribution of quota.
