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Manpower export from Bangladesh

 must congratulate Helal Ahmed Chowdhury, Managing Director of Pubali Bank, for coming up with a very innovative scheme for funding the prospective job seekers abroad. A substantial number of the expatriate wage earners are victims of the unscrupulous manpower agents who extract substantial sums from job seekers for employment abroad. Pubali Bank has initiated an expatriate lending project whereby the bank will advance money to the prospective job seekers who will repay the loan from their remittances.

I do have some personal experience regarding manpower export. It just so happens that when Bangladesh commenced exporting manpower and introduced the manpower license system my license number was number one. That is to say that I was the first to get hold of a manpower export license.

I was under the impression that we would be paid by the company that recruited workers from Bangladesh. I soon find out that it was the other way round. I had to pay money to the agents of the company-recruiting workers. Naturally, this had to be borne by the aspirant of a foreign job.

Since I could not accept the situation I surrendered my license. Some years later, when I started contracting work in the Emirates, I got a fresh license and I took at least 500 skilled workers and engineers without any charge, including payment of their airfare.

I happened to be to the promoter director of Al-Baraka Bank with the Dallah Group of Saudi Arabia as the foreign partner. Every year, at least four board meetings used to be held in Jeddah and, over the years, I attended at least 20 such meetings.

I found the Dallah Group to be a very enlightened business conglomerate working in at least a dozen countries. They were a larges employer and did not charge any money from the recruits. From the Bangladesh side, we have Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Services Limited (BOESL), which is supposed to act as the recruiting agent in Bangladesh.

I am not familiar with the proportion of workers that go abroad through the BOESL, but I would imagine it would be a small fraction only. Also, BOESL simply does not have the funding and the facilities needed to contact all prospective employers abroad and to search for avenues of employment in new countries.

When we were working in Abu Dhabi, the Labour Counsellor in the Bangladesh Embassy would frequently request us for transport if he wished to visit Dubai. In other words, the embassy did not have cars or funds for the Labour Counsellor to visit prospective employers and, if possible, take them out for dinner.

This is probably the situation in every Bangladesh Embassy abroad. Therefore, this calls for the involvement of some agencies that would promote employment of Bangladesh workers, particularly skilled ones, in the large number of prospective employer countries. In this matter the government may give all facilities to BOESL, and maybe also involve NGOs like Brac and Grameen Bank to promote employment of Bangladesh workers abroad.

The whole question of manpower export has been analysed by the Royal Danish Embassy, Dhaka, in their report Vision 2015, Bangladesh as a leading manpower exporter January 2008, and by Bangladesh Enterprise Institute in their study September 2007 on Policy and Public Benefit Interventions, to help Bangladesh achieve annual migrant remittances of $ 30 billion by 2015, and also in a report by India Institute of Management Calcutta September 2007.

From these reports it can be seen that the possibilities of manpower export are enormous. For example, there is a worldwide shortage of qualified nurses, and Bangladesh has got practically millions of unemployed women. Other skilled workers like carpenters, plumbers, auto-mechanics, air-conditioning technicians, and so the list goes on. Also qualified technical workers like IT engineers, computer experts etc.

We have to acknowledge that Bangladesh is practically surviving on the remittances of Bangladesh workers. The total remittance in the year 2006-2007 was $ 5979 million, and the remittance for the period July-December 2007 was $ 3447 million. In other words, for the year 2007-2008 the remittance is likely to exceed $ 7 billion. Unfortunately, although the government and the country are reaping huge benefits from wage earners’ remittances, not enough is being done to administer the whole business of manpower export, which is really the goose that is laying the golden egg.

On January 10, 2008, I was travelling to Karachi by PIA. In the 30 seats of the Business Class there were only 5 genuine business class passengers and the rest were workers. There were 2 captains sitting behind me, and when I enquired if the other passengers had paid the full business class fare the captains replied in the affirmative.

I talked to the person sitting beside me and asked him about the purpose of his journey. He said that he was going to work as a labourer in Abu Dhabi and would be paid only 650 Dirhams per month. I recalled that in 1990 we were paying our workers a minimum salary of 1250 Dirhams.

On further enquiry I found out that the person next to me had neither any schooling nor vocational training. He had paid Tk 2.5 lacs for the job. Two things are revealed in this disclosure — the worker was not skilled and it would take him at least 5 years to recover his investment. The nexus of agents in Bangladesh and abroad would be the main beneficiaries.

Unless we break this nexus our skilled workers, who might command better salaries but cannot pay the premium, are deprived from the jobs and, secondly, a considerable amount of foreign exchange is paid through the backdoor to the agents abroad. All this money would have come to Bangladesh as workers’ remittances.

If one examines the whole manpower business in depth one would find numerous underhanded dealings, both by our recruiting agents and the agents abroad. False passports, false visas, false recruitments proliferate on our side. And overseas, if a company has 100 vacancies the foreign agents may take out permission for 1000 vacancies, and our workers who land up in the foreign country are left stranded without a job. We read frequently about these happenings in the newspapers.

Presently, almost all job seekers are hostage to the unscrupulous recruiting agents in Bangladesh and also to their counterparts in the country of employment. Actually, most large companies and government agencies abroad do not charge any money from the workers they employ.

The lower employees of the overseas companies tie up with some local agents and charge money for any recruitment. The entire business of manpower export requires review and professional management as Bangladesh can benefit much more than we are at present. The reports mentioned above should be studied and the measures suggested implemented.

Overseas jobs fall sharply in August as demand shrinks in S Arabia, Malaysia

Overseas jobs for Bangladeshis fell by 38 per cent in August compared to the previous month due to a decline in demand in the Middle Eastern countries and Malaysia, officials said on Monday.

The Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training said in August 54,708 Bangladeshis found jobs abroad August, the lowest monthly figure since January, which is also 27.86 per cent down from the same period last year.

The number of jobs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Malaysia, two of the major employers of Bangladeshis, came down sharply in August, dragging the total overseas jobs down by 37.97 per cent, said a BMET official.

Only 5121 Bangladeshi found jobs in Saudi Arabia in August, down sharply from 9749 in the previous month while only 3610 people got employment in Malaysia, down from 18,126 in July.
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Seoul to recruit 7000 Bangladeshis by 2009

South Korea will recruit over 7000 skilled and semi skilled workers from Bangladesh in the next 16 months, the country’s ambassador told the FE on Monday.

Suk-Bum Park said around 3000 Bangladeshi would get jobs in the East Asian economic giant this year while the rest in 2009.

“We have growing employment opportunities in the country’s construction, textile, fisheries, agriculture, electronics and machinery sectors,” Mr. Park said.

“We’ll recruit around 3000 workers under the first ‘Employment Permit System (EPS)’ system this year. In 2009, the number of recruitment will be around 4000,” he said.

Asia’s fourth largest economy has already recruited more than a thousand Bangladeshi under the newly launched ‘Employment Permit System (EPS)’ system, with salary starting from Tk85,000 a month.

Officials said under the EPS, South Korea will recruit 50,000 skilled manpower from 14 countries, including Bangladesh, to make up for its growing shortages of labour force in the country.

“We need huge number of overseas workers as the population growth in South Korea has become stagnant. There are jobs available in almost every sector,” Mr. Park said.

The ambassador said his government has launched the EPS to help the local companies recruit skilled manpower in a transparent process and also to protect the rights of the overseas workers.

Under the EPS, an overseas worker has to enlist his name online, pass Korean language proficiency test and prove his skill for the desired job.

Human Resources Development office of the Korean labour ministry conduct the selection process. Once selected a Bangladesh worker will have to bear only air travel cost, which is around US$850 dollar.

The EPS was launched after Seoul and Dhaka signed an agreement, paving the way for recruitment of skilled Bangladeshi workers by South Korean private companies.

The agreement protects the interest and rights of Bangladeshi workforce in South Korea, where around 18,000 Bangladeshis are now employed and the new deal will facilitate employment of another 10,000 workers within 2010.

What about a regulatory body for manpower sector?

BANGLADESHI workers in the Middle East and Southeast Asian countries are increasingly becoming vulnerable to deception, ill-treatment and torture. Deception by recruiting agencies at home or employers abroad has been a recurring event in case of Bangladeshi workers. But the recent police actions against a good number of Bangladeshi workers and their deportation by the government of Kuwait and return of several hundred workers from Malaysia in batches being deceived either by the manpower agents at home or their employers, are among instances that have attracted wider attention. So, it is quite natural for the enlightened section of the society to be seriously concerned about the wellbeing of the Bangladeshi workers who toil hard in distant lands remaining away from their near and dear ones and remit billions of dollars back home annually.

The workers’ remittance, which stood at $6.0 billion in 2007, is actually the single largest source of foreign exchange earning. Though the earning of foreign exchange-nearly $8.0 billion in the fiscal 2007-08, from the readymade garments (RMG) export is shown as the largest, the actual earning from it becomes much lower if one takes into consideration the value addition content. While taking note of the contribution of the expatriate workers to the national economy, more precisely, to the balance of payments (BoP), speakers, who included, among others, an economist, a retired high army official and the head of the association of the recruiting agencies, at a discussion meeting held early this week in Dhaka made scathing criticism of the ministry of expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment for its failure to protect the interests of the migrant workers. The indifference of the officials of the Bangladesh missions to the plight of the migrant workers was also noted with grave concern. One speaker even suggested for the formation of a regulatory commission to oversee the manpower export issues.

Unfortunately, the government seems happy enough counting the dollars being remitted by the migrant workers. It has never been serious to address the problems the migrants face before and after their departure. At least, three major issues need to be addressed with utmost urgency. Firstly, there should be all-out efforts to give exemplary punishment to the unscrupulous manpower agents who are primarily responsible for all the sufferings of the migrant workers. Secondly, people seeking to go abroad with jobs should be encouraged to attend vocational training programmes and become skilled and semi-skilled workers. This, if ensured, could help secure more jobs abroad and higher remittance earning. Finally, it should be ensured that the fund being mobilized by the government in the name of welfare of overseas Bangladeshi workers is spent on their short- and long-term welfare.

In case of distress situation following deportation, financial help must be extended to the returnees, at least, for a few months. A part of the financial gains coming from long-term investments being made by the expatriates’ welfare fund is needed to be spent on stipends or scholarships for the children studying in schools and colleges and on the healthcare facilities for their families. Given the importance of their remittance money in the national economy, the expatriate workers deserve better deal from the government. There is no denying that the ministry concerned and the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) have utterly failed to protect the interest of the migrant workers. So, the suggestion to have a sort of regulatory body for the sector deserves to be given due consideration.

Joint Panel to Address Bangladeshi Labor Issues

Labor problems among the Bangladeshi workers in the Kingdom will top the agenda of the Saudi-Bangladesh Joint Committee scheduled for April 7-8 in Dhaka. Abdulrahman Albawardi, deputy minister for labor affairs, will lead the 16-member Saudi side. Leading the Bangladeshi team will be Mohammed Aminul Islam Bhuyan, secretary for economic relations.

“The forthcoming meeting will resolve several issues pertaining to the Bangladeshi workers in the Kingdom,” said Wahidur Rahman, deputy chief of mission of the Bangladesh Embassy in Riyadh. He said the Bangladeshi team would be seeking permission from the Saudi side to draw up policy guidelines with the Saudi government regarding the recruitment of Bangladeshi manpower.

“We believe in sending men who are skilled and semi skilled in their respective professions and we like our men to be paid a minimum wage of SR600 per month, not including food and accommodation,” Rahman said, pointing out that this would eradicate the free-visa system, which is common among a section of the Bangladeshi workers.

Rahman also said that the participants at the meeting would also identify the problems faced by the Bangladeshi employee and their employers during their period of work contracts.

“Some of the problems are created due to not paying of wages and harassment,” he said, pointing out that they could be resolved in a friendly manner. Admitting that a fraction of the Bangladeshi population has got into some problems in the Kingdom, leading many to identify Bangladeshis as a specific problem, he said that the rest of the workforce has earned a good name for their loyalty and perseverance.

A spokesman from the Labor Ministry said that the ministry would take up the issue of workers who are coming into the Kingdom on free visas, pilgrims who overstay their Haj and Umrah visas, and upgrading the skills of Bangladeshi workers.

Labor Minister Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi on Sunday confirmed a ban on recruitment of some categories of the Bangladeshi workers. He said the Kingdom would continue to recruit Bangladeshi doctors and engineers, as well as cleaning and maintenance staff for government departments. The ban was only limited to certain jobs, such as domestic servants and farm hands, he added.

Gosaibi said the ban was part of a new recruitment policy that aims to strike a balance among the various nationalities working in the Kingdom. “The restriction was imposed in line with the policy of limiting the number of workers hired from a single country,” he said, adding that the ban would be reconsidered in the future.

The minister added that the recruitment ban on some categories of Bangladeshi workers was called for since some of these categories have already reached the set quota.

The minister said the decision excludes cleaning and maintenance companies having government contracts. The ban is not permanent since the ministry periodically revises recruitment decisions. “The ministry might reconsider the status of Bangladeshi workers in the future if a balance is struck between their numbers and that of all foreign workers in the country,” Gosaibi said.

Govt targets child labour phase out

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Manpower export

I must congratulate Helal Ahmed Chowdhury, Managing Director of Pubali Bank, for coming up with a very innovative scheme for funding the prospective job seekers abroad. A substantial number of the expatriate wage earners are victims of the unscrupulous manpower agents who extract substantial sums from job seekers for employment abroad. Pubali Bank has initiated an expatriate lending project whereby the bank will advance money to the prospective job seekers who will repay the loan from their remittances.

I do have some personal experience regarding manpower export. It just so happens that when Bangladesh commenced exporting manpower and introduced the manpower license system my license number was number one. That is to say that I was the first to get hold of a manpower export license.
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Bangladesh in Global Competitiveness Report 2007-2008

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‘The Global Competitiveness Report’ is a publication of World Economic Forum. 

‘The Global Competitiveness Report has evolved over the last 3 decades into world most comprehensive and respected assessment of countries competitiveness, offering insight into the policies, institutions and factors driving productivity & then, enabling sustained economic growth and long term prosperity’.

‘Produced in collaboration with leading academicians and global network of research institutions the Global Competitiveness Report provides users with competitiveness indicators for a large numbers of industrialized and developing economies’.

This year edition features a record 131 economies, accounting for more than 98% of the world GDP.

Besides hard data from the leading institutional source, indicators include results of the executive opinion surveyed by the World Economic Forum annually. The survey covered perception of several thousand business leaders on topics related to national competitiveness.

The parameters which were considered in Basic Requirements are institutions, infrastructures, macroeconomic stability, health and primary education; in Efficiency Enhancers higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial market sophistication, technological readiness, market size and in Innovation and Business sophistication are business sophistication and innovation

 

Global Competitiveness ranking:

 

Seven best in the world:

	Rank	Score
USA	1	5.67
Switzerland	2	5.62
Denmark	3	5.55
Sweden	4	5.54
Germany	5	5.51
Finland	6	5.49
Singapore	7	5.45

Asia’s best:

Singapore	7	5.45
Japan	8	5.43
Korea	11	5.40
Taiwan	14	5.25
Malaysia	21	5.10
China	34	4.57
Saudi Arabia	35	4.55

 

Standing of the SAARC countries:

India	48	4.33
Sri Lanka	70	3.99
Pakistan	92	3.77
Bangladesh	107	3.55
Nepal	114	3.38

 

Performance of Bangladesh:

Bangladesh ranked 107^th out of 131 countries in 2007-2008. It was 92^nd position out of 122 countries in 2006-2007.

The performance of Bangladesh in different parameters are as follows:

Basic requirements		111
1st pillar	Institution	126
2nd pillar	Infrastructure	120
3rd pillar	Macroeconomic stability	87
4th pillar	Heath & primary education	105

 

Efficiency enhancers		91
5th pillar	Higher education & training	126
6th pillar	Goods market efficiency	93
7th pillar	Labor market efficiency	76
8th pillar	Financial sophistication	75
9th pllar	Technological readiness	125
10th pillar	Market size	75

 

Innovation and sophistication		111
11th pillar	Business sophistication	102
12th pillar	Innovation	117

Bangladesh Labor Market.

The labor force in 1998 was estimated at approximately 64 million workers. In 1996, approximately 11% of the civilian labor force was employed in the industrial sector. Agriculture accounted for 63% of workers, and service employees were 26% of the labor force. Statistics are unreliable because of a large, informal, unreported market. The unemployment rate in 2001 was estimated at 35%.

Although 1.8 million out of the five million workers in the formal sector of the economy were unionized, this represented only a small fraction of the economically active population. Most unions are affiliated with political parties. Strikes are a common form of workers protest. There are industrial tribunals to settle labor disputes. The government can impose labor settlements through arbitration, as well as by declaring a strike illegal. Unions have become progressively more aggressive in asserting themselves, especially on the political scene.

Public sector workers’ wages are set by the National Pay and Wages Commission and may not be disputed. In the private sector, wages are set by industry, and collective bargaining rarely occurs due to high unemployment and workers’ concerns over job security. The legal workweek is 48 hours, with one day off mandated. This law is rarely enforced, especially in the garment industry. Children under the age of 14 are prohibited by law to work in factories but may work (under restricted hours) in other industries. However, such restrictions are rarely enforced and children work in every sector of the economy. In 2002, the government estimated that 6.6 million children between the ages of five and 14 years were engaged in all types of employment activities, many that were harmful to their well-being.

Bangladesh has an agrarian economy with 32% of GDP coming from the Agriculture Sector. In recent years, the country is doing much better in some sectors, but the proper balance is required for achieving positive goals. Bangladesh has recently achieved significant growth of GDP. But, the problem also remains that the growth rate of GDP is dominated by agriculture while manufacturing is weak. Lack of democratic practice and corruption works as obstacles to achieving government targets. If the government is not successful in creating a favorable investment climate and investment does not match the savings rate, then the ability to achieve the targeted level of GDP growth will remain in doubt. To attract investment, the government should readjust the rate of interest and should create a political atmosphere that will be favorable for domestic as well as foreign investment. Policies that promote remittances would also be helpful to stabilize economy. With high population growth continuing to expand the economically active population and the simultaneous employment cuts in privatized industries, the labour market situation in Bangladesh is fragile. Relatively high rates of inflation combined with high levels of unemployment may lower real wages. To overcome these problems, the government should create job opportunities and should take initiatives to run industries. Within the policy of privatization, the government may take measures towards creating jobs and managing industries. Since the world economy is volatile, Bangladesh faces both risks and opportunities. Unless we can devise far-sighted strategies, we risk remaining marginalized in the increasing global flow of commodities, capital, information and technology.

7-point strategy to tap new manpower export market

The caretaker government announced a seven-point strategy to ensure the well-being of the Bangladeshi workers abroad and expand the manpower-export market worldwide by removing the prevailing hurdles, reports UNB.

Foreign and Overseas Employment Adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury Wednesday announced the strategy, which includes exploring new manpower-export markets in the Scandinavian, European and East European countries like Norway, Sweden and Romania.

The strategy includes extension of the existing markets in the Middle-East, including Libya, enhancing skills in the English language, exporting manpower from Monga-affected areas, ensuring proper utilisation of remittances, ensuring strong monitoring to check fraud in manpower export, and working together with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the International Migration Organisation (IMO).

Speaking at a press briefing at the Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry, the adviser said the government has adopted the strategy as it believes that the country’s prime foreign currency earnings would come from the manpower-export sector.

During the briefing, Overseas Employment secretary Abdul Matin Chowdhury noted that until September last, a total of 8,830 Bangladeshi citizens were in prisons in different countries across the world, either in police custody or under remand. Of them, 1,930 were convicted.

Of the convicts, the highest 636 Bangladeshi nationals are in Saudi jails.

Iftekhar Chowdhury said the Malaysian government is yet to convey any decision about suspending recruitment of Bangladeshi workers. “But, despite that, everyday, on an average, about 700 workers are leaving for Malaysia and the government is working on the issue so that the market could be resumed,” he said.

The caretaker government would deal with the manpower-export business in the new manpower markets taking lesson from Malaysian incidents, he informed. He also said a South Korean delegation is arriving in Dhaka on December 9 to discuss manpower import from Bangladesh.

He noted that an agreement would be signed between the Korean HRD and Bangladesh’s state-owned recruiting agency Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Service Limited (BOESL).

“Korea will recruit about 3,000 workers. Those who are now in Korea will get priority in recruitment as they have command on Korean language,” he added.

The diplomat-turned Adviser said a total of 526,171 Bangladeshi workers have gone abroad for jobs since the present caretaker government assumed office in January 2007.

He informed that a total of 764,903 workers were issued outgoing permits in last 11 months, of which 2,38,000 were waiting to fly. “This figure is the highest in any time in the history.”

The country received US$ 5.78 billion (Tk 40,323 crore) in remittance until November 22. “If the trend continues, the remittance flow will exceed US$ 6 billion,” the Adviser said.

BSS adds: Iftekhar also said the government will also introduce a strict system to monitor manpower recruiting agencies so that none of them could cheat people seeking employment abroad. The government already took action against Kabir Enterprise, for wrongdoings, but its licence was yet to be cancelled, he informed adding that for their misconduct punitive action was also taken against some officials at the Bangladesh High Commission in Malaysia.

The government, if required, would bring back the 49 Bangladeshis agitating in front of Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur as they did not get the jobs they were promised, he said replying to a question. The government was aware, he said, replying to a question, that some people were acting against Bangladesh’s interest in Malaysia.

Action would be taken against such elements in due course, he mentioned. The question of withdrawal of Malaysian ban on Bangladeshi manpower was being discussed by the two governments, he told a questioner.

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