Editorial
Job offers from Malaysia
Need for handling them carefully
Following the withdrawal of the ban on export of Bangladeshi workers to Malaysia, after intervention at the highest level of the administration, several Malaysian companies have recently issued the letter of job demands to their respective agents in the country. As much as we welcome the offers made, it is important that the job is carried out in a transparent way without any undue harassment to the recruits who come from a comparatively poorer segment of our population. As learnt from the media, there is already a problem amongst the various recruiting agents. No less than the president of Bangladesh Association of Recruiting Agents said that it was yet to resolve the issue of distribution of job indents amongst member agencies. Over the years one of the most contentious issues facing the workers going abroad has been the cost that an individual worker has had to incur before he or she could join the host company. Even to this day, there are no firm rates of charges being collected by recruiting agents from individual workers that differ from country to country. While the total migration cost per individual worker stands at Tk 85 thousand, an official of the Ministry of Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment has already expressed the opinion that it may be on the higher side based on actual break-up of costs covering airfare, payable government taxes, costs of medical check up inclusive of service charges for the agency concerned. Our workers abroad whether in Malaysia or elsewhere are our prized citizens earning valuable foreign exchange for the country. For long they have been victims of exploitation both within and outside the country due to callousness on our part and non-transparent operations of many a recruiting agent in the country driven by sheer motive of profiteering. We urge the administration and the recruiting agents to ensure that none of the recruited is subjected to any harassment. We should be particularly careful in handling export of our workers to Malaysia in view of the fact that not too long ago it had banned recruitment of workers from Bangladesh.
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