The government will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Malaysian government to send Bangladeshi workers to that country under the Government-to-Government (G-to-G) Plus system within a week.
Under the new system, private recruitment agencies of both Bangladesh and Malaysia will be able to send workers, instead of their being sent under the existing Government-to-Government (G-to-G) system, sources in the expatriate ministry said.
A proposal has been prepared by the expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment ministry to introduce the new system for exporting manpower to Malaysia. It will be placed at the Cabinet meeting to be held today, the sources added.
Under the new system, a worker would have to spend only Tk. 40,000 as visa processing fees to go to Malaysia, and neither the private agencies nor the government would get over Tk. 40,000 from a worker under the system, according to the proposal.
A high-ranking official of the expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment ministry said they have sent the proposal to the Cabinet Division for placing it before the Cabinet meeting today after revising the one placed before the Cabinet meeting in November last year.
“We have revised the proposal in line with the Malaysian government’s proposal to send Bangladeshi workers to Malaysia,” he said. “After getting approval from the Cabinet, we will sign an MoU in this regard within a week,” he added.
“Bangladeshi private recruitment agencies will send workers to Malaysia after receiving requirements from Malaysian private recruiting agencies.Malaysian private agencies will send their requirements to the Bangladeshi agencies after obtaining the requirements from the Malaysian buyers,” the official said.
The expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment minister, Nurul Islam, said they are going to sign a deal with the Malaysian authorities, allowing the private sector to recruit Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia. “We will be able to speed up recruitment and send them to Malaysia after signing the G-to-G Plus deal,” he added. Under the G-to-G Plus system, Malaysia will also open up other job sectors like construction, manufacturing and services, he disclosed.
However, the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) said the new system—G-to-G Plus—would not yield good results, just as the G-to-G system had failed to send the necessary manpower to Malaysia in the past.
BAIRA president Mohammad Abul Bashar told The Independent that they would be able to send Bangladeshi workers to Malaysia in accordance with the government’s rate after the new system is introduced, but the system may not be successful if the authorities are not allowed to recruit, in this connection, all those holding valid recruitment licences.
“We urged the government to introduce the B-to-B system for exporting manpower to Malaysia. Under that system, the government would monitor us, and we would do business under the proper guidelines,” he said.
At present, Bangladeshi workers go to Malaysia through the G-to-G system, which was signed in November 2012. However, under this framework, only around 10,000 workers have been sent so far to the plantation sector in Malaysia. So far, the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) has selected some 14 lakh people for Malaysia. Of them, just around 10,000 workers have been sent to that country till now.
There are around 1,000 recruitment licence agencies that send Bangladeshi workers abroad.