Malaysia will soon open up its market for Bangladeshi workers, ending a freeze of more than three years, but concerns remain over the syndication of a few manpower agents and the high cost of migration. Recently an understanding was reached for recruiting Bangladeshi workers to the Malaysian labour market. Following allegations of labour exploitation and high migration costs of up to Tk 4 lakh per worker, the Malaysian government in 2018 froze labour recruitment from Bangladesh. As per a Malaysian human resources ministry statement, recruitment of Bangladeshi workers will be open to various sectors including plantation, agriculture, manufacturing, services, mining and quarrying, and construction.
Ahead of the reopening of the Malaysian market, labour migration experts say the concerns about syndication are justified as Malaysia is not allowing all manpower agents in Bangladesh to recruit workers. Moreover, a draft MoU suggests the workers will pay the migration cost instead of employers paying it in full as per the ethical recruitment model. A powerful lobby in both Dhaka and Kuala Lumpur is behind labour recruitment arrangements and it wants only 25 Bangladeshi agencies to be allowed for recruitment labourers to Malaysia. There can be 250 other recruiting agents to assist them. This is almost a similar situation that developed in 2016 through the G-2-G Plus mechanism under which the Malaysian government selected only 10 Bangladeshi agents to recruit workers, although the Bangladesh government had proposed names of 745 recruiting agencies.
The vested recruitment agencies have set up six to seven layers of brokers that raise the cost. Though the success of digitalisation is highly praised, the recruitment system follows the old system. A group of recruiters oppose the Malaysian government selection of recruitment agencies as it will create syndication. There are already examples of Bangladesh sending workers to Qatar under the ethical recruitment model. Why shouldn’t the Malaysian government follow this and put in place an open and transparent system?
