After a hiatus of eight years, the doors to send workers to Malaysia are finally set to open for Bangladesh from next week, according to sources concerned. Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Nurul Islam said that the Malaysian government has recently sent a letter conveying that they were ready to recruit Bangladeshi workers under the Government-to-Government Plus (G2G Plus) system.
“The Malaysian government sent a letter to the Ministry of Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment on Wednesday stating that they are ready to recruit Bangladeshi workers under the G2G Plus agreement,” Nurul Islam told this correspondent. He said his ministry has already started its preparations to supply manpower to Malaysia from the next week, roughly 11 months after the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two governments.
Besides requesting Bangladesh to start sending workers, according to the sources, the Malaysian government has also sent a list of agencies they approved to carryout the recruitment process.
“Probably, the sending of workers would start from next week as the Bangladeshi recruiting agencies, which have been selected for handling the manpower recruitment, are ready for the much awaited process,” said an official at the manpower ministry requesting not to be named.
Sources at the Bestinet, a Malaysian IT company that has developed the online system to handle the manpower recruitment from Bangladesh, also confirmed that their government has sent a letter to Bangladesh government on Wednesday requesting to initiate the the process of sending workers.
The Malaysian government stopped hiring Bangladeshi workers in 2009 after experiencing entrance of huge illegal workers between 2007 and 2008.
Later, Bangladesh tried to reopen the market. After several attempts by the Bangladesh government, the Malaysian government agreed to recruit Bangladeshi workers selecting Bangladesh as a source country for sending workers.
In 2013, Malaysia signed an agreement for receiving workers from Bangladesh under the G2G mechanism. But, the initiative failed as Bangladesh government could send only 8,000 workers.
Later, on February 18 last year, the two countries signed the G2G Plus deal involving the recruiting agencies for selecting and sending workers to Malaysia in five sectors to avoid malpractices.
Under the agreement, about 1.5 million workers are likely to be sent to Malaysian in five years to work in tree plantation, construction, service, agriculture and manufacturing sectors. Malaysia, home to nearly 6m foreign workers, is already a key manpower market for Bangladeshi nationals – about 600,000 are estimated to be in the country, mostly working in the plantation sector.
It is expected that the online process would reduce the cost of sending workers to Malaysia as well as their sufferings.
The second most important driver of Bangladesh’s economy, after the garment industry, is remittance sent by Bangladeshi workers working in different countries. The reserves in Bangladesh Bank are increasing because of the toil of the Bangladeshi expatriate workers.