Dhaka asks KL to allow pvt agencies

The government has requested Malaysia to let private agencies get involved in recruitment of Bangladeshi jobseekers alongside existing government-to-government (G2G) system in a bid to prevent human trafficking through the sea.

If the Malaysia authorities accept the proposal, thousands of Bangladeshis are likely to get jobs in the Southeast Asian country every month, according to officials at the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur.

“It will be possible to manage employment opportunities for 1-2 lakh Bangladeshis in Malaysia within a year. The Malaysian employers have good demand for foreign workers in different sectors,” a senior official at the Bangladesh mission told The Daily Star on Monday.

The two governments are exploring alternatives to speeding up recruitment of jobseekers following media reports on thousands of Bangladeshis' ordeals after they fell victim to human trafficking through the Bay of Bengal, the official added.

Bangladesh High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur Shahidul Islam said their main target was to ensure available jobs for the Bangladeshis in all sectors in Malaysia with nominal costs.

“We are constantly holding talks with the Malaysian authorities to figure out ways to speed up recruitment of Bangladeshis. They [Malaysian authorities] are very sincere in this matter,” he told The Daily Star on Monday.

Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain is scheduled to visit Kuala Lumpur today to discuss the recruitment issue.

Since the launch of G2G system in April 2013, only around 7,000 Bangladeshis have so far got plantation jobs in Malaysia, although around 1.4 million jobseekers registered that time.

Malaysia opened only plantation sector for the Bangladeshis following a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Dhaka and Kuala Lumpur in November 2012.

Under the MoU, migration cost has declined sharply from Tk 3 lakh to only Tk 45,000 for each jobseeker on average.

But the system has failed to deliver as Bangladesh could not ensure available jobs for its people under the G2G system.

Recruitment brokers and human traffickers have meanwhile started taking advantage of the government's failure and deceiving the poor jobseekers and luring them into taking perilous sea journey.

Although there are no accurate figures as to how many jobseekers have reached Malaysia through the Bay, more than one lakh Bangladeshis are believed to have crossed the sea since 2012, according to the UN agency UNHCR.

Several hundred have lost their lives in the sea and at the human trafficking camps in Thailand and Malaysia, it mentions.

Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (Baira) President Mohammad Abul Bashar told The Daily Star that the government could not resolve the human trafficking problem unless available jobs were ensured for the Bangladeshis.

“Around 50,000 Bangladeshis would be able to find jobs in Malaysia every month if private recruiters are involved,” he observed.

Earlier in 2009, the Malaysian government imposed a ban on recruiting workers from Bangladesh, allegedly for massive irregularities by the recruiting agencies.

After four years of the ban, the governments of Bangladesh and Malaysia resumed the manpower export through the G2G system in 2013.