Inept diplomacy responsible for weaker overseas labour market

Reza Mahmud :
Inefficient diplomatic measures have made the potential overseas labour market weaker, the stakeholders alleged.
Leaders from Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) alleged that there are huge potentials of expanding overseas labour market are going in vein due to insufficient efforts from our embassies abroad.

They said most of the European countries are now suffering from shortages of manpower. Besides, several others emerging and developed countries also are seeking manpower from densely populated countries like Bangladesh.
Kazakhstan, a oil and gas enriched central Asian state, is suffering from manpower crisis as the ninth largest country of the world have only 2.5 crore people.
Besides, the country started huge development work as it has enormous wealth.
Similarly, the other countries in the region like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan also have shortages of manpower while their development work is going fast.
BAIRA leaders and members said while Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Philippines have taken the advantages with pragmatic diplomatic efforts, Bangladesh is lagging behind.

When contacted, Mohammed Fakhrul Islam, Joint-Secretary General-1, BAIRA
and Managing Partner, Human Resource Development Center told The New Nation, “While labour shortage-stricken countries are very hungry to hire workers from abroad we are failed in spite of having lots of eligible manpower to export only for the weakness of diplomatic efforts.”
He said, “It should be a must to recruit concerned officials in labour wing of our embassies abroad so that they can play an effective role in expanding labour market in the respective countries.”
Officials from the different offices of the Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment ministry should be hired for the labour wing in our embassies so that they can contribute to expanding labour market and solving every crisis of our migrant workers in those countries, he suggested. BAIRA members said migrant workers frequently alleged lack of

coordination from our embassies in different cases like renewal of passports and such others problems.
BAIRA members alleged that lengthy process of passport reissuing and such other official process create problem which has a long time bad impact on our labour markets, they said.
When contacted, Reaz-ul-Islam, Senior Vice-Presiden, BAIRA

and Proprietor of Reaz Overseas, told The New Nation, “It is true that if we want to expand our manpower market abroad as per the potentials there is no alternative of strengthening diplomatic efforts.”
He said Bangladesh has vast opportunity to export hundreds of thousands of manpower in Europe, America, Africa and Asian countries. Strong diplomatic measures are needed for the purpose.
When contacted, Imran Ahmed, the Minister for the Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry told The New Nation, “We are trying our best to explore new labour markets abroad for our manpower.”
“The efforts are going on and we are hopefully expanding the markets sharply worldwide,” he said.