Malaysia ready to restart hiring Bangladeshi workers soon

FT ONLINE

Malaysia has expressed its willingness to resume recruitment of Bangladeshi workers shortly.

The assurance came at a bilateral meeting between Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Imran Ahmed and Malaysian Human Resources Minister M Kulasegaran in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, said a statement issued by the expatriates' welfare ministry.

The meeting decided that the next joint working group meeting will be held in Dhaka on November 24 and 25. Soon afterward, the Malaysian job market is expected to reopen for Bangladeshi workers.

Bangladesh High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur Shahidul Islam, and secretary Salim Reza and additional secretary Dr. Ahmed Munirus Saleheen of the expatriates' welfare ministry, among others, attended the meeting.

At the meeting, both sides focused on various issues such as rational migration cost, involvement level of recruiting agencies, medical tests and financial and social protection of workers and data sharing.

They agreed on low migration cost and one medical test of workers in the home country.

The Malaysian government had stopped hiring Bangladeshi workers in September 2018 following an allegation that a syndicate was involved in the process of recruitment through Pengambilan Pekerja Asing (SPPA) under the G-to-G plus system.

Nearly 200,000 workers went to Malaysia through this system. Recruiters then charged each worker about RM 20,000 (Tk 400,000) as against the officially fixed migration cost of Tk 160,000.

Manpower recruiters hailed the latest developments and expressed the hope that the market will reopen soon.

They also urged the authorities concerned to provide equal opportunity to all recruiting agencies for sending workers to the Southeast Asian country.

The recruiters also called for fairness in the recruitment process so as to ensure low migration cost.

According to the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training data, more than 1.0 million Bangladeshi workers have gone to Malaysia since 1976.

Migration experts said a strong monitoring system should be in place to check unethical practice, as a section of manpower recruiters always remains active to control the market for their own interest.