The government is mulling bringing manpower brokers under a legal framework and devise a mechanism for recruiting agencies to realise service charges from oversees job seekers based on their wages to reduce cost of going abroad for employment.
Brokers in manpower exporting and importing countries gobble up a substantial share of the money that the job seekers spend 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.
This happens mainly in cases of unskilled workers, who constitute 50 to 60 percent of the migrant workforce, worsening their socio-economic condition.
“There are instructions from the higher authorities to devise an effective mechanism so that overseas job seekers are not forced to make undue payments,” said a high official of the expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment ministry.
Previous experience showed that the government’s fixation of cost for sending workers abroad did not work. For instance, cost of sending workers to Malaysia was fixed at Tk 84,000 each but each of the around four lakh workers spent Tk 2 lakh to Tk 2.5 lakh.
“So, we asked Baira (Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies) representatives to give their opinions on how recruiting agencies can reduce cost of labour migration,” the official told this correspondent.
Against this backdrop, experts have come up with ideas like recruiting agencies’ authorising middlemen and making them accountable in cases of cheating of job seekers, and even opening BMET (Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training) offices at upazila level.
The ministry official said one idea to cut high migration cost is that the recruiting agencies will realise service charges from aspirant migrants on the basis of their wages. If the agencies can arrange jobs with high wages, they will get high amounts.
“Such a mechanism may encourage recruiting agencies to find out better paid jobs,” he said.
The government has already formed a committee for legal reforms in immigration sector, and will take decisions based on opinions of Baira representatives so that these are complied with properly, the official mentioned.
Former executive committee member of Baira Abdul Alim said if service charges based on wages are introduced, recruiting agencies will advertise in newspapers on overseas jobs specifying required qualifications, wages and service charges. Since job seekers will then get all the information easily, middlemen will have no scope to tempt and cheat them.
Alim also said the government should allow recruiting agencies to set up offices and invest money to search for jobs in manpower importing countries. Most of the agencies now take money abroad through hundi to search for job demands.
Agency offices abroad can even help curb middlemen’s activities in the manpower receiving countries, Alim thought.
Baira’s former secretary general Ghulam Mustafa emphasised opening BMET offices in upazilas. Whenever recruiting agencies get information about job demands, they will submit those to the BMET for immediate passing on to all its offices across the country, he said.
“Under this system, overseas jobseekers will go to their nearest BMET offices, instead of going to middlemen, to know about the jobs and will then contact recruiting agency offices,” Mustafa said. This will greatly reduce middlemen’s dominance and cheating of job seekers, he felt.
Authorising the middlemen to operate as representatives of recruiting agencies may be helpful to some extent but it may also be seriously abused, he said. To abolish middlemen system in labour receiving countries, Bangladesh should sign bilateral agreements with those countries, he suggested.
Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) Coordinator Prof Dr CR Abrar however said the earlier rules that recruiting agencies should publish job demands in newspapers did not work. Rather, middlemen continued to exploit jobseekers in various ways.
He said a better option to be relieved of the middlemen is hiring jobseekers from the BMET database, which should be properly maintained.
“Now, the unauthorised middlemen are out of control. Once they are recognised and provided identity cards, they can be caught in cases of fraudulent practices,” Dr Abrar said.
The government should also allow recruiting agencies to invest money abroad for market research, he suggested.
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