Bangladesh can penetrate into labour markets of the Group of Seven (G7) countries gradually and steadily, provided international standard training institutes are set up in major divisional cities, said diplomats, manpower exporters, bureaucrats and policymakers.
Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, Bangladesh Ambassador to Germany, said that Bangladesh needed some international training institutes in divisional cities to groom the youth targeting labour markets of developed countries.
As the population of Germany is decreasing, Bhuiyan, also a former chairman of the National Board of Revenue (NBR), said that properly trained and groomed Bangladeshis could meet a certain portion of labour requirement in the German market.
He proposed to the stakeholders of Germany and Bangladesh to set up an international standard training institute in Bangladesh to groom Bangladeshi nationals.
He, however, said that Bangladeshis must be well groomed in the German language and culture before sending them to Germany.
Germany’s skilled worker shortage has worsened in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, with significant consequences for the economy.
South Korean Ambassador in Dhaka Lee Jang-keun also said that learning the language and culture of respective countries is important in the case of expat workers.
Bangladesh sent a total of 2275 workers to South Korea during the January-June period of the current calendar year.
Since beginning labour export to South Korea, Bangladesh as of June 2022, exported a total of 41,868 workers to that country.
Abida Islam, former Bangladesh ambassador to South Korea and now ambassador to Mexico, said that Nepalese workers have better understanding of South Korean language and culture have higher demand in South Korea. Bangladeshi workers can also increase their demand, provided they are properly trained in language and culture with training in relevant sectors.
Meanwhile, Noman Chowdhury, Chairman of Dahmashi Group, said that the government should set up some international training institutes in divisional cities to groom the youth targeting labour markets of developed countries.
Bangladesh has sent a total of 210 skilled workers to Japan, specially trained and groomed by Training Operation at the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET).
He also said that the population of Germany and Japan was decreasing and Bangladesh could tap those markets, provided the youth of the country are properly trained in respective sectors.
The quality of training institutes was very important in the context of labour export while penetrating the labour markets.
The culture and language are also important in cases of migrant workers. The youth should be trained in the language and culture of respective countries. The migrant who will go to Japan should learn Japanese language and culture. The person who will go to Germany must learn the German language and culture, Chowdhury added.
As Covid-19 situation has improved, Bangladesh has started exporting labour to Japan, sources in the BMET said.
Mir Khairul Alam, additional director general of BMET, said that some 3,000 Bangladeshi youths have been trained in Japanese language with requisite technical training.
The manpower export to Japan depends on the requirements of the G7 market. Bangladesh has started exporting to Japan. The government is eyeing higher training of manpower to cater to the market of industrialized markets, he also said
To tap the Japanese labour market, some 30 technical training centres [TTCs] across the country under the BMET are offering the youths necessary training and a six-month course on Japanese language and culture, said Engineer Md Salah Uddin, director of training operation at the BMET said.
Bangladesh is penetrating into the Japanese labour market, and in this regard, has already begun grooming a good number of Bangladeshi youths with the necessary skills.
Covid-19 slackened the recruitment of Bangladeshi youths into the Japanese market in 2020 and 2021, he added.
Md Salah Uddin said that the situation has changed now and export of manpower will gradually improve within a year.
Scepticism
However, a leading manpower exporter of the country was not as optimistic, instead saying that the training and teaching methods need improvement and the duration of courses should be extended up to a year.
Bangladesh has sent a total of 2,232 workers to Japan from 1999 to 2021 — just 0.02% of its total manpower exports.
The government is now conducting six-month-long training sessions on spoken Japanese language at 30 TTCs.
Engineer Md Lutfor Rahman, principal of the Bangladesh-Korea TTC at Darussalam, Mirpur, said trained teachers are conducting the courses.
The courses started back in 2017. The duration of the course is six months. Every batch has 70 students and the course fee is only Tk1,000, he said.
In a significant shift for a country long closed to immigrants, Japan is looking to allow foreigners in certain blue-collar jobs to stay indefinitely, starting as early as the 2022 fiscal year, an official from the Ministry of Justice said last year.
Under a law that took effect in 2019, a category of “specified skilled workers” in 14 sectors, such as farming, construction, and sanitation have been allowed to stay for up to five years, but without their family members.
The government had been looking to ease those restrictions, which had been cited by companies as among the reasons that they were hesitant to hire such help.
If the revision takes effect, such workers — many from Vietnam and China — would be allowed to renew their visas indefinitely and bring their families with them, as the other category of more skilled foreigners is allowed to do now.
Tokyo on August 27, 2019 signed a memorandum of cooperation (MoC) with Dhaka to recruit skilled Bangladeshi workers.
Under the MoC, Japan would recruit skilled workers for its 14 sectors including care-giving, building cleaning management, machine-parts industries, electronics, construction, shipbuilding, automobile and agriculture.
While talking to this correspondent recently, Japanese Ambassador in Dhaka Ito Naoki said that Japan had a shortage of workers in some industries due to the declining birthrate and aging population, and the Japanese government believed that securing sufficient human resources is necessary for future industrial growth.
Japan has revised the law and set up a new framework to accept foreign citizens equipped with a certain level of work expertise and skills. The new framework, “Specified Skilled Worker” aims to ensure foreign workers a legal status and good working and living conditions, he also said.
