Expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment adviser Asif Nazrul on Wednesday said that Malaysia might take fresh 30,000 workers from Bangladesh as it was set to reopen its labour market to foreign workers.
The adviser, however, said he was not sure whether the migration process this time would be free from the illicit practices by manpower syndicates.
While talking to reporters at the ministry office Probashi Kalyan Bhaban in Dhaka city, he said that Malaysian authorities did not confirmedly say anything in response to Bangladesh’s repeated request for keeping its labour market open for all valid Bangladeshi recruiting agencies.
‘According to the agreement we have with Malaysia, we will send the list of agencies and they
[Malaysia] will select from it,’ he said, adding that the Bangladesh government did not have much more to do in this regard.
Malaysia is one of the top destinations for Bangladeshi migrants as the Southeast Asian country employed 12,97,333 Bangladeshi nationals since 2004 mainly in agriculture, restaurant, factory and service sectors.
Migration experts said that the vital market was closed for Bangladeshis at least four times since 2000 with brief reopening in between amid a racket taking firm hold of the whole recruitment business that has long been accused of being infested with corruption, irregularities and high migration cost.
In the last phase of recruiting Bangladeshi workers, Malaysia took around 4,50,000 workers between June 2022 and May 2024, but it shut down its market on May 31 past year to Bangladesh, bringing serious allegations of irregularities.
Again, on Tuesday, Malaysia announced to hire foreign workers for three main sectors and 10 subsectors.
The Bangladesh Civil Society for Migrants, a coalition of 23 migration-focused organisations, in several statements over the time blamed a syndicate of Bangladeshi recruiting agencies for the irregularities, demanding their trial and a ban on their recruitment business.
Malaysian newspaper Malaysiakini recently reported that Bangladesh had agreed, at Malaysia’s request, to suspend investigations into the powerful syndicate accused of exploiting Bangladeshi migrant workers.
Rights bodies alleged that similar networks operated in 2017–2018 without prosecution.
When asked, adviser Asif Nazrul said that Malaysia allowed all recruiting agencies of their other source countries because in each of them the number of agencies did not exceed several hundred, but in Bangladesh, around 4,000 recruiting agencies were active.
He said that during their visit to Malaysia in August 11–13 when they accompanied chief adviser Professor Muhamamd Yunus, they also urged the country to introduce ‘Graduate Plus’ visas for Bangladeshi students studying in Malaysia, enabling thousands of students to secure jobs there.
Meanwhile, the interim government has reached an understanding with the Malaysian authorities that they will soon take 7,900 aspirants who missed their trip to Malaysia last year even after securing visa and plain tickets and jobs in that country.
According to the understanding, these aspirants will go to Malaysia through the government recruiting agency, Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Services Ltd.
He also mentioned that the interim government took a number of initiatives, including new online software based migration process, reintegration and sub-agent controlling policy for quality migration.
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