Foreign workers evading tax, laundering money but none to oversee

MEDIA reports in a national daily on Saturday said all moves to streamline the foreigners’ jobs in the country so far have fell flat causing huge revenue loss to the government. On August 2 an intelligence agency has written to the Home Ministry and National Board of Revenue (NBR) raising fresh concern on huge tax evasion and money laundering. It said foreign workers are taking the advantage of cash payment system by employers avoiding the banking system and moreover employers are using very low minimum salary structure to hide real payment picture to evade tax payment.
Reports said nationals of over 44 countries now work in the country including India, China, Vietnam, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and some disclosures said alone Indian nationals send around US$ 5 billion annually to be the 5th largest overseas remittance source for India. One may then guess — what is the real amount of remittances all foreign nationals are sending together. Their number runs from 5 lakhs to 10 lakhs; there is no database for them though two government task forces so far have failed to sort out a mechanism over the past one and a half decade. Various government agencies are using various figures without coordination while the government has utterly failed to control arrival of foreign workers, mainly trained workers for working in garment factories and service sectors.
As it appears, an utterly corrupt and dysfunctional government totally failing to protect the national economy and stop money laundering of so huge amount every year. It is so sad that our young people are going to the Middle East and other countries for low paid jobs but foreign workers have captures highly paid jobs in the country illegally sheltered by big employers. The government has failed to create enough trained manpower to fill up the jobs vacancies that foreigners have captured.  
Need no mention that a very strong industrial lobby is pushing every government efforts to identify presence of illegal workers in factories and businesses. They are not cooperating with the NBR or intelligence agencies to establish a system of correct enumeration and monitoring to avail of their illegal services. They are helping them to lout immigration rules. We must say it can’t go for ever.