Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Khandakar Mosharraf Hossain yesterday said the government will fix the immigration cost to be charged by recruiting agencies for sending workers to Saudi Arabia.
“The government will form a framework for charging fees in this regard and the private recruiting agencies will send workers as per the government-fixed rate,” he said while speaking at a press briefing at his ministry.
Earlier on Sunday, the Saudi government reopened its manpower market to Bangladeshi jobseekers lifting a seven-year embargo.
The minister said the overall procedure over the manpower export to Saudi Arabia will be controlled by the government. The private recruiting agencies will send workers to the Gulf country from a government database in which some 22 lakh Bangladeshis have already registered their names to go abroad looking for jobs.
Mosharraf Hossain also said the final decision about the recruiting procedure will be decided after a meeting with a delegation of the Saudi government.
The recruitment of semiskilled people will also come up for discussions with the Saudi delegation, he added.
The minister said, “We’ll talk to the delegation about visa trading. If the authorities concerned take necessary steps to stop visa trading then Bangladeshis would be able to go to Saudi Arabia at a minimum cost of Tk15,000-20,000.”
It was decided during his visit to Saudi Arabia on January 18-23 that the Saudi employment companies will bear the travel and medical costs of workers, he said.
Experienced workers and those who had returned earlier from the country will get a chance to go to the country after re-registration, he said.
Replying to a question over issuing the Machine Readable Passports (MRPs) for the workers, the minister said a total of 30-35 mobile teams are engaged in providing MRPs to the Bangladeshi workers. The work of providing MRPs will be completed by November, he hoped.
