Recruiting agencies said that to recover the costs of sending workers to Malaysia they have no option other than charging what they do. EWOE Ministry as well as Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies officials, however, dismissed the allegation as ‘baseless’.
Migrant rights body, Bangladesh Probashi Kolyan Society Executive Director mentioned in the report that he received complaints that the recruiting agencies were charging over Tk three lakh from each worker for Malaysian job, which is 10 times the fee set by the government.
EWOE Ministry Joint Secretary (employment) said 5, 340 workers would get Malaysian jobs under G2G plus mechanism. He said the government authorized recruiting agencies to select and send the workers to Malaysia. BAIRA President said that the government fixed the migration cost for each worker at Tk 36,000.
BAIRA Secretary General said that a limited number of recruiting agencies got permission to send workers to Malaysia. Migrant rights campaigner and founder Chairman of the WARBE Development Foundation expressed fears that collection of high charges from the workers could again close the Malaysian job market that was reopened to Bangladeshi workers two weeks ago.
He demanded opening of a monitoring cell comprising representatives from all the stakeholders to stop the gross irregularities.
It seems that we have not yet learned any lessons from the past as Malaysia previously prevented our labourers from entering their markets due to the haphazard way we sent them which resulted in almost one million staying there illegally. This occurs whenever there is a mismatch between the amounts needed to go there and the actual salaries received by the workers – resulting in a situation where workers may have to work overtime or become illegal to get back the money they needed to go abroad in the first place.
Our hardworking workers do many jobs in many countries of the world which are considered menial or degrading or are simply hard work by the natives of the countries. In this way they earn and send precious foreign exchange to our country which has an overwhelmingly positive effect on our balance of payments – indeed it is the main reason why the BOP has remained positive for some years now. Exploitation by recruitment agencies which think of the job seakers as cash cows and skin them for exorbitant sums must end. The government should try to rein in the agencies to ensure that they need to pay a reasonable sum for gainful employment. It is the least they deserve.
