BAIRA finds 3 reasons as threat to Malaysian labour mkt

Reza Mahmud :
Country’s Manpower exporting to the huge potential Malaysian labour market has lost its pace, which created huge disappointments among all the stakeholders.
Bangladesh and Malaysia inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in December last year in Kuala Lumpur that lifted a suspension on labour import imposed by the south-east Asian country over allegations of malpractices and irregularities by a 10-member syndicate of Bangladeshi recruiting agencies.
After signing the MoU, huge optimism was created to send thousands of Bangladeshi workers to Malaysian shortly.
The stakeholders said that such an expectation was not illogical, as the Kuala Lumpur has huge demands of workers and the Dhaka was also ready to send manpower in numbers.
It was expected that in the next three years, more than five lakh new workers from Bangladesh will be employed in Malaysia and through this, the total remittance sent to Bangladesh from Malaysia will exceed USD three billion.
Sources from Bangladesh Associations of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) said the reality found very harsh.
The BAIRA leaders said that Malaysia has sent demands for about two lakh workers after signing the MoU.
Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) has issued certificates of about 1.5 lakh workers.
But only 32 thousand workers have reached Malaysia so far.
The stakeholders including workers and recruiting agencies are very unhappy and disappointed with this output.
They think that the Malaysian companies may hire manpower from other countries like Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Philippines instead of Bangladesh due to the delay in supplying of workers.
Sources said, though a 25-agency syndicate has been involved with sending manpower to Malaysia as per the MoU, but the newly elected committee of the BAIRA stand against it.
After taking efforts, the BAIRA leaders have become able to expand the syndicate by including more 75 agencies and stand at 100-agencies syndicate now.
They also expect that the expansions will be continuing.
Stakeholders said that it is not only syndicate for which, the labour market was stalled for long.
They found mainly three reasons responsible for sending less manpower to the Asian industrially developed country. When contacted, Mohammad Fakhrul Islam, Joint Secretary General-1, BAIRA
And Managing Partner of Human Resource Development Center told The New Nation, “The BAIRA has found out three main reasons responsible behind sending less workers to Malaysia.”
“The one is the difficult online process to send manpower to the country, second reason is the system of allocating of the visas among the 100 agencies. It also is making the pace delayed. And the third main reasons are the remaining of a syndicate in the process,” the BAIRA Joint-Secretary General said.
He said when the recruiting agencies bring demands from Malaysian companies and become busy with processing those work orders, the syndicates also allocate several others visas for taking necessary procedures.
As a result, the process is being delayed.
“It is making the process more delayed by allotting work orders among the syndicate members. Agencies who are directly involved with bringing the orders should complete the process of sending the manpower as per their obtaining work orders. If other companies get the responsibility to complete the procedures, it must take many times to make it easy,” Fakhrul Islam said.
He and the other leaders of BAIRA told that the syndicate also created problem in this regard.
“When 800 recruiting agencies are working for sending manpower to Saudi Arabia, they must gain a big achievement of sending huge number of workers. But in the case of Malaysia, there are only 100 agencies have allowed to work. So, the output must to be less,” Fakhrul Islam said.
When contacted, Shameem Ahmed Chowdhury Noman, Secretary General of BAIRA, and Proprietor, Sadia International told The New Nation, “There are demands for about two lakh workers but only 32 thousands of workers were sent so far. There are huge gap between the demand and supply.”
The BAIRA Secretary General said that they have submitted letter to the Expatriates’ Welfare Ministry asking to find and solve the problem remaining in the process.
Meanwhile, Imran Ahmed, the Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister could not be reached while trying to contact several times through mobile phone call for seeking comments in this regard .
Dr. Munirus Saleheen, Secretary of the ministry also could not be reached.