Despite the November 26, 2012 government to government agreement with Malaysia to export manpower at low migration costs, the South Asian country has only recruited 198 workers since then.
The Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) have already drawn up and sent over a database of 10,000 workers in line with Malaysia’s initial demands, but there is little progress in the actual migration.
A director of the bureau, requesting anonymity, said following the recruitments in the last week of April, Malaysia has been asking for various “corrections” of the workers’ documents including fingerprints, scanned passports and photos.
Another official said: “We have already sent corrected documents of around 2,500 workers.”
The director added: “We are sending them the corrected documents, but they are not issuing visas.” Pointing out that an “uncertainty” has been created over the whole deal, he said: “We are in an embarrassing situation as Malaysia-bound workers are constantly contacting us to know about the progress of their recruitment.”
Another official quoted Overseas Employment Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain as saying during a visit to the bureau on June 29 that if Malaysia does not accept the corrected documents, the whole recruitment process would be scrapped.
However, the minister told the Dhaka Tribune Saturday that Malaysia slowed the recruitment process down as they are forming a new government. However, later the recruitment would speed up, he added. “They would be recruiting 5,000 workers at a time instead of 100.”
“There is no problem regarding recruitment from Bangladesh and we hope they will start recruitment at the end of this month,” Bangladesh labour counsellor to Malaysia Mantu Kumar Biswas told the Dhaka Tribune over phone Saturday.
