Reza Mahmud :
A section of Bangladeshi workers are hampering the emerging potential labour market in Europe by leaving their workplaces breaching rules.
Romania announced it would take 40,000 laborers from non-EU countries last year to fulfill its workforce shortage in different sectors.
The number increased to 100,000 this year. Most workers are expected to come from Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Vietnam, and India.
In the meantime, dozens of Bangladeshi workers have been arrested in Romania in recent days by local police while crossing borders to the developed countries violating their recruitment conditions in Romania and such others countries in the continent.
Some of those have been deported to home banning their travel to the country for years.
The Romanian Immigration Department has sent back three Bangladeshi migrants for attempting to cross border to another European country after entering on work visa.
They have also been banned from entering the country for five years.
The immigration police arrested them on August 2.
Experts, stakeholders and officials said that such incidents have hampered the very important labour market.
These incidents have been emerged in such a time while the declining trend of traditional Middle Eastern countries labour market created disappointement among the workers.
They said that Saudi Arabia the main traditional labour market in the Middle East now trying to increase job for their own people.
The other countries in the region also follow the similar ways.
As a result, demands of BD workers have been declining sharply there.
In these circumstances, newly emerged manpower market in Europe’s Romania brought a new light of hope for the foreign bound workers.
Italy, Greece, Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia also started to hire Bangladeshi workers enlarging the hope.
Daud Ali, Bangladeshi ambassador to Romania, said that more than 10,000 Bangladeshi workers had got visas to come to the EU country in the past two years. According to the ambassador, they have work opportunities in the construction, service, and shipbuilding sectors, with average salaries between Euro 400 to Euro 1,000 per month.
Many employers also offer accommodation, meal allowance, and overtime separately, which makes it possible for the workers to send back most of their income to home.
Meanwhile, manpower exporters and officials said that these potential and emerging markets are now being hampered by some of the unaware workers.
Most of those workers try to go to any European countries in the Schengen zone.
As a latest incident, about 20 Bangladeshi workers have been detained by Romania’s immigration department while they trying to flee Hungary on Tuesday.
“Bangladesh could try to send as many people as possible. But the problem is there has been no checks and balances in Dhaka during the recruitment process. Recruitment agencies don’t pay attention to who is willing to work in Romania and who is not. They only take the ones ready to pay more than others,” Daud Ali said journalists.
He said Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment ministry could play a vital role here.
“The ministry can ensure a fair recruitment process that will ensure people who are actually interested in working in Romania will get permission to leave the country. It has to ensure checks and balances in recruitment,” he said.
Meanwhile, Md. Shahidul Alam, Director General of Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training could not be reached while trying to get his speech in this regard.
