Korean employers reluctant to hire Bangladeshis

bdnews24.com :
Bangladesh has not been able to fully utilise its labour export quota in the lucrative Korean market, a Korean official in Dhaka has said.
Min-Hwa Lee of the Korea’s Employment Permit System (EPS) Centre in Dhaka on Sunday said frequent job switching and illegal stay make Korean companies think twice before recruiting Bangladeshi workers.
Bangladesh signed the EPS agreement with Korea in 2007 and started sending workers from 2008 through the government-to-government channel.
The Korean Human Resources Development’s EPS Centre tests workers’ skills and Korean language proficiency before forwarding a list to companies that want to recruit foreign workers.
An individual owner takes the final decision of hiring from any of the 15 countries that have signed EPS agreement with Korea, Min-Hwa told the press on Sunday evening.
He said Bangladesh has been able to send only about 10,000 workers since 2008.
Of them, over seven percent have become illegal immigrants. “Its ‘very sensitive’ for us,” he said.
“Vietnam has not been able to send any workers for the last one and a half year due to the illegal-stay problem.”
He said the Bangladesh government had been requested to workers aware of the Korean system before sending them.
The Korean job market is lucrative for most Bangladeshi workers where they can earn over Tk 150,000 a month, five to six times higher than the usual middle-east market.
The director said that last year the Korean government had kept a quota of 2,000 workers from Bangladesh, but their companies had recruited 1,800.
“It was only 1,300 in 2012 against the same quota,” he said.
This year, Bangladesh can send a maximum of 2,700 workers.
“It all depends on the owners of a company. We just prepare a list and offer it to them,” he said.
Min-Hwa said the tendency to switch jobs deterred companies from recruiting new workers from Bangladesh.
“A company takes them and gives them full training, but after a year they switch to another company.”
A worker can stay in Korea for a maximum of four years and 10 months at a time.
“If they work in the same company, they can go back again for the same period after three months in Bangladesh,” the EPS chief said.
“We (the Korean government) can only select eligible workers, but cannot guarantee their jobs.”
Korea takes foreign workers through the EPS system, which won an award from the United Nations in 2011 for its transparency and efficiency in hiring foreign workers.
In recent months, Bangladeshi workers have held street demonstrations after failing to make it to Korea.
Min-Hwa said once listed, a name would be in the automated process for a year for hiring before being deleted. It is an automated system, but workers can extend their enrolment for another year after giving a fresh medical test.