It is a piece of welcome news that Japan, one of the major destinations of expatriate workers from the third world countries, agreed to take specified skilled workers (SSW) from Bangladesh in 14 fields under two categories within the next five years. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) has already been signed between Bangladesh and Japan in this regard. To become qualified as SSW, Bangladeshi people have to pass Japanese language proficiency test and skills proficiency test. But this is not true for the foreign nationals who have technical intern training.

According to reports, under two categories (I and II), skilled workers would be taken by Japan. The contract for category-I can be renewed for five years if they pass a Japanese language test and have a certain skill level in the relevant field. But in principle they will not allowed to bring their families to Japan. But contracts for the category-II can be renewed indefinitely once they are employed with higher skill levels than specified skilled workers (category-I), and are permitted to bring their spouses and children.

Certainly, this is a big opportunity for Bangladesh and it is expected that the government would be able to successfully expedite the whole process of recruitment from the beginning to end. For long this newspaper is advocating for creating semi-skilled and skilled workers because unskilled workers can do very little for themselves as for the nation. In the foreign nations, the unskilled workers have to compromise their dignity.       

The 14 fields/sectors in which the workers from Bangladesh would be taken by Japan are care worker, building cleaning management, machine parts and tooling industries, industrial machinery industries, electric, electronics and information industries, construction industry, shipbuilding/ship machinery industry, automobile maintenance, aviation industry, accommodation industry, agriculture, fishery and aquaculture, manufacture of food and beverages, food service industry.

Since learning Japanese language will act as key for recruitment of workers, the expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment ministry must make successful its four-month Japanese language course through its 26 technical training centres all over the country that it already started in February 2018. The ministry will also have to see carefully that workers can go to Japan with the cost fixed for the purpose and they are not cheated by the private agencies.