Around five to seven lakh Bangladeshi workers may find jobs in different sectors in Malaysia this year, state Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam said yesterday.

The procedure for recruitment of the workers will begin next month, he told reporters after attending a programme at Dhaka University's Nabab Nawab Ali Chowdhury Senate Bhaban.

“The recruitment of the workers will be done online. Baira's agencies will deal with the process after getting job demands from the Malaysian employers,” he said.

Shahriar Alam visited Malaysia on January 19 to attend the "Extraordinary Session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers on the Situation of the Rohingya Muslim Minority in Myanmar".

After a meeting with the Malaysian human resources minister last November, Expatriates' Welfare Minister Nurul Islam had said the two countries finalised the recruitment process, G2G Plus.

G2G Plus was undertaken by Malaysia and Bangladesh after the previous state-level labour hiring arrangement, G2G, signed in late 2012, appeared less effective.

Nurul Islam, however, did not elaborate on the exact mode of operation of G2G Plus, but emphasised that labour migration cost would not be more than Tk 40,000.

Business insiders alleged that a Malaysian private IT company, which would manage the overall recruitment process online, had selected a cartel of 10 recruiting agents of Bangladesh to manage the entire process in exchange for huge money.

But Shahriar Alam said there was no scope of forming such syndicates as the government would strongly monitor the whole process.

“We will urge the people to be more careful about dealing with any agency for getting jobs. They must know about the job, salaries and other facilities before going for any deal,” he said.

He was speaking as the chief guest at the launching ceremony of the book, “Untold Stories of Migrants: Dreams and Realities,” organised by Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) at the senate building.

The book featuring the lives of 150 Bangladeshi migrants in foreign lands was edited by RMMRU Founding Chair Prof Tasneem Siddiqui.

Undocumented Bangladeshis who might be more than one lakh in Malaysia will get two years' time to legalise their status and find jobs, Shahriar said.

Prof Tasneem highlighted stories from the book, while Supreme Court Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed, DU's Prof Fakrul Alam, Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) Director General Selim Reza, among others, also spoke at the programme.