Staff Reporter :
Focusing the widespread corruption in manpower sector, a new study of the Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) on Thursday revealed that over Tk 5,234 crore was laundered from the country last year in the name of obtaining visas for male migrant workers.
The study titled, ‘Governance in Labour Migration Process: Problems and Way Forward’ says like previous year, the overseas job seekers also became the victims in 2016 as the staffs and middlemen of recruiting agents at home and abroad were involved in extracting money from them in various ways.
“This huge amount of money had been sent to KSA, Bahrain, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Singapore and Qatar through illegal channel to get male workers’ visa,” TIB Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman said at a press conference in the city.
He added a total of Tk 16,873 crore was taken from migrant workers for visa purposes last year.
The middlemen in manpower exporting and importing countries gobbled up a huge amount of the money that the job seekers spent for overseas employment.The evil practice eventually raises the cost of migration, which in many cases the workers cannot retrieve from their wages during the job period. The country’s recruiting agents’ staffs and middlemen have a nexus and deal with those foreign countries where workers wanted to go.
“Recruiting agents’ staffs and middlemen of the foreign countries and Bangladesh in many cases completed the whole deal for buying and selling visas illegally,” Iftekharuzzaman said. The study says the male overseas job seekers face serious difficulties in visa processing, collecting and attesting and also during medical checkup.
“It is very unfortunate that the finding revealed that the recruitment agents’ staffs and middlemen show a physically fit overseas job seeker as unfit during medical check up,” he said.
Later the recruitment agents’ staffs and middlemen started putting pressure on the job seeker, who was earlier shown unfit, to bribe the racket in a bid to certify him as medically fit.
Each overseas job seeker had to pay bribe money Tk 13,000 to Tk 15,000 for approval on each application at Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry, the study said, adding the Ministry approved 61,122 applications in 2016.
Around 90 percent male migrant workers fell victim of corruption last year. “Besides, they were harassed and manhandled in many ways to get visa for going abroad,” Iftekharuzzaman said The study says if good governance could not be ensured and corruption not checked in the manpower sector, the progress already achieved will be at risk.
For lack of proper monitoring and accountability, irregularities and corruption has been engulfing in the manpower sector. TIB member Hafiz Uddin Khan, its deputy Executive Director Prof Dr Shumaiya Khayer and Director (research and policy) Mohammad Rafiqul Hassan were also present at the press meet.
