Staff Reporter :The Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment has taken a decision to allow the workers to take the services of private recruiting agencies to obtain job visa for Malaysia.According to sources, the ministry has directed the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) to cooperate with the private agencies for the recruitments of the workers to prevent illegal migration.The government has taken the decision to facilitate the workers to legally go to Malaysia outside the government to government (G2G) arrangements, theDirector of BMET Golam Mostafa Khan said on Thursday. “We have already asked the recruiting agencies to send the workers’ passports with Malaysian employment visas to BMET. We will send the passports to the Malaysian High Commission in Dhaka for the verification of the visas,’ he said. Only passports with authentic visas will get clearance from BMET, Mostafa Khan said.A memorandum between Bangladesh and Malaysia was signed on November 26, 2012 for sending unskilled workers to work in the plantations in Malaysia under the G2G arrangement. Out of 14 lakh workers enlisted for the plantation jobs, around 8,000 were able to go to Malaysia under that system. However, several thousand skilled and unskilled workers went to Malaysia over the last three years without taking clearance from BMET, he said.As per sources, BMET refused to give clearance to the workers who had collected Malaysian visas on their own initiatives or through private recruiting agencies, but they were able to leave the country, bribing Bangladesh immigration personnel. Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies blamed the Bangladesh government for its failure to send the workers to Malaysia to work in the other sectors like construction and manufacturing factories under the G2G system. The workers of Nepal, India and Pakistan can work in all sectors in Malaysia, but the Bangladeshi workers are allowed to work only in the plantation sectors.
