The New Nation - Internet Edition

Maswood Alam Khan

Apa Khabar? Apa Khabar?"……"Tumi Kemon Aso? Tumi Kemon Aso?" (How are you?) "Khabar Baek, Khabar Baek" ……"Ami Bhalo Asi, Ami Bhalo Asi", (I am fine). I thought the young man had gone mad mumbling some mantras out of his claustrophobia as I heard him murmuring those words, seated on his chair in a Boeing aircraft back in 1995. Later, on my frank enquiry, I came to learn that it was his maiden journey by air on his way to Malaysia from Bangladesh to work there as a wage-earner; by rote he was learning some functional Malay phrases well before his plane landed at Kuala Lumpur. I was simply flabbergasted meeting a dogged learner of a foreign language!

During my three and a half-year stint in Kuala Lumpur as Chief Representative of Agrani Bank in Malaysia I failed to learn Malay to claim that alien tongue as my second language, even after taking a course to pick up the language. On the other hand, Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia, who knew no language other than their mother tongue, had their command of Malay so fast that one of my Malaysian (Chinese by race) friends told me that some Bangladeshis working in his factory were much beter in verbal communication in Malay than even the Chinese who are born citizens in Malaysia.

Exports have gone up. Success in exports of RMG, manpower and shrimps has opened our eyes to a secret that the job a machine cannot do and where human hands are more powerful than a robot is possible for all our unemployed people to perform, if only we knew how to reinforce our wishes to help toughen their hands with some skills. We hope and pray, the day is far away when a robot will occupy the human chauffer's driving seat

Of late, we are vocal not so much on micro enterprises as on small and medium-scaled industries; our policymakers want our people to be micro entrepreneurs and be graduated as soon as possible into industrialists, first in small and then in medium-scaled enterprises. Such shift in business road maps is vital in the backdrop of neck breaking competition against the global players who are always out to gobble up the small fries. For our survival, we have to jumpstart with industries compatible enough to compete with our giant counterparts in the world.

Given the trend of globalization, burgeoning purchase capacity of consumers, expansion of market for quality products and services and countries like China and India continuously wheting their products to turn those into cheap and at the same time durable and atractive, self-employed micro entrepreneurs in our country may find it difficult to survive if they cling for long to their traditional cotage industries. The widow who took a skimpy loan of Taka 5000 from an NGO to fry 'muri' by parching rice in hot sands would simply be crushed under the giant steps of a big player like "Praan Group" who, for example, may churn out 'muri' frying tons of rice in their enormous automatic furnaces in a mater of minutes. We must help the widow find an alternative trade path where a pirate player has not yet cast his predatory eyes.

For our young boys and girls, who are too poor to start even a micro business, fortunately, there are some niches where robotic hands cannot reach and economies of scale cannot compete. One such area is labor-intensive and the other knowledge-intensive. A healthy young boy who can lift heavy loads by his hands or a young girl who can drive a taxicab in inclement weather or a lady who is a certified nurse is always of great demand anywhere in the world.

We should note population growth in most of the developed countries is negative and trend of life longevity there is highly positive resulting in a hyper growth of ageing people. Developed countries have already been experiencing acute shortages of young, sturdy and trained people in areas, for example, like waste management, a colossal domain where there is a huge demand for guest workers. On the other hand, there is also an acute shortage of certified nurses all over the world. With eyes open to such overseas vacancies leaders of countries like ours, blessed with huge populations, must groom adult boys and girls accordingly, who otherwise could not, cannot or should not prosecute higher studies in universities.

It is heartening to learn that Bangladesh is exporting manpower to Canada. Our government must take extra precautions so that instances of corruption that foiled in the past many lucrative ventures of exporting manpower to different countries like Italy, Japan, and Korea are not repeated in case of manpower export to North America. Proper handling of this manpower exportation to Canada may pave future ways for our youths to other developed countries in America, Europe and Australia.

Bangladesh exported around 5 million people across the world from 1976 until April 2007; US$ 8 billion is expected as remitances from them by the end of the current financial year. Bangladeshi wage earners should be accorded Maharaja's reception in red carpets whenever they come home, as they are the best and the safest cash cows for our export earnings.

Many countries set up programs to invite guest workers whenever they face shortage of manpower, both skilled and unskilled. Under such a program more than one million guest workers mostly from Italy, Spain and Turkey were atracted to Federal Republic of Germany from 1955 until 1973.

With declining growth of population and burgeoning growth of aged people with much longer than expected life longevity (thanks to unprecedented advancement of medical science) in almost all the developed countries and with beter education acquired by students from poor countries at their homes and abroad countries like USA, Canada, Korea, Japan, Italy and many other countries in Asia, Australia and Africa are presently encouraging migration under programs like H-1B visa in USA and similar visa programs elsewhere.

A rare window of opportunity is now open when our government must facilitate the employment agencies and individuals to scout around and avail of overseas employments for our unemployed and underemployed youths. Of course, we should also see that there is no suicidal brain drains as a result and our people are not subjected to abuses in some countries where, for instance, migrant domestic workers working for wealthy families cannot change jobs as their passports are withheld by their employers who treat the workers as good as their possessions or as soft as their personal baggage.

Our government, in 2002, amended a few immigration rules liberalizing females to apply for jobs in all the countries of the Middle East Hundreds of Bangladeshi females, because of amended rules, are now remiting hard currencies as wage earners in many Arabian countries. Skilled female workers like nurses and other technical professionals, though very few in number, have already established their proficiencies in many countries.

According to a rough estimate, about 25 million people, along with a comparable number of dependents accompanying them, are working as foreign or guest workers all over the world of which about 14 million, including about 4 million undocumented workers, are engaged in the United States alone. There are, nevertheless, 5 million foreign workers serving in Saudi Arabia and 5 million in Northwestern Europe and not less than 500 thousand in Japan. Professional experts like physicians and engineers, blue-collar workers, language teachers and entertainers mostly constitute the international foreign workers. Some guest workers turned out as successful businesspersons and entrepreneurs in their host countries and a substantial number of such migrants assimilated themselves as citizens of different countries of their choice.

Whereas 48 percent of global migrant workers are female, we could not send abroad as female wage earners even 1 percent of Bangladeshi migrant workers though 90 percent of the Philippine, 80 percent of the Indonesian and 75 percent of the Sri Lankan migrant workers are female. We will have to incur irrecoverable opportunity cost if we fail to undertake a crash program of training potential females as nurses and experts in various trades and vocations and send them abroad as wage earners on a par with our neighboring countries.

Some 8 million Filipinos, almost 10% of the Philippine population, left their homeland to seek work abroad and are remiting home an average of about US$10 billion a year, which represents 13.5 percent of the country's GDP. Their jobs often include nursing, technology, fishing and teaching, although a third are composed of unskilled workers.

There is not a single developed country in the world where fluent English speaking Filipino maids babysiting children or taking care of household chores cannot be found. On the same count, hordes of Filipinas, after graduating and having work experiences, are leaving homes on their ways to developed countries in North America and Europe as certified nurses, a profession so lucrative on account of pay and prestige that even Filipina doctors undergo retraining to become nurses.

One public examination that roars their country, somewhat akin to SSC examination in our country, is the Philippine Nursing Licensure Examination, a multiple choice exam to test basic nursing level competency, held two times every year: June and December. Holders of a Bachelor's Degree in Nursing from a college or university that complies with the international standards of nursing education sweat buckets to answer hundreds of quizzes to secure at least 75% marks in each of a plethora of Test Modules ranging from 'Historical perspectives in nursing' and 'Care of clients with altered health paterns' down to 'Ethical-moral-legal responsibility' and 'Emergency & disaster nursing', etc.

Once passed the exam, the nurses first gather work experiences in their own country for one year or two and then sit for another exam called CGFNS (a globally conducted test to determine nurses' proficiency levels) which they easily pass to gain eligibility for Visa Screen Certification, a pre-requisite to obtaining a US occupational visa. Filipinas effortlessly blend with any hospital environment in any corner of the world where English is allowed as a medium of communication. The Philippines is the only country in the world where almost 80 percent of population can converse in their second language, English, though their mother tongue is Filipino, thanks to a long period of American colonial rule over the country.

Babies learn their mother tongue as they have to; language is a lifeline. Bangladeshi guest workers in Malaysia learned Malay fast as they had no alternative medium available; Malay was their lifeline. Chinese Malaysians are not much at home in Malay as they can communicate in their mother tongue with a huge population of Chinese speaking Malaysians. I failed in Malay and somehow survived for years in Malaysia because even a taxi driver in Kuala Lumpur could follow what I could express in English. Necessity, as the adage goes, is the mother of invention and based on this human penchant for learning lifesaving skills 'Immersion Language Programs' are nowadays available in software that can help one learner pick up a foreign language in a mater of days.

In this age of globalization one who is eager to change his/her fate must learn at least two languages in addition to his/her mother tongue. Smelling mountains of money in China westerners are now learning Mandarin and it may not be a surprise if Mandarin, in a mater of years, replaces English as the world's the most popular lingua franca! Unless we make second and third language courses compulsory in both elementary and secondary schools and colleges our youths would be skidded off in the global races for survival.

A student after somehow graduating in an Honors Course like Sociology from any of our universities may be termed educated but may not find a clerical job in a bank; on the other hand a younger girl, without passing her SSC exam, may find a rewarding job with a pay of Taka 2,00,000 (Taka Two lakh) a month in any French speaking province in Canada if she successfully completes a French language course. On the same count, a Bangladeshi experienced nurse can earn more than Taka 4,00,000 (Taka Four lakh) a month if she qualifies in CGFNS Test and picks up a few hundred words and phrases functionally essential in a hospital to converse in English, French, Spanish or Mandarin-Chinese.

I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears a boy of my own soil parroting "Apa Khabar?" ("Tumi Kemon Aso?") (How are you?) while on his maiden journey by air to Kuala Lumpur. So, I can bet my botom dollar that our boys and girls would perform three times beter in mastering a language or qualifying in CGFNS compared to Filipinas or Koreans, if only our government today announces that licenses of all the private universities and private clinics would be cancelled if they, as a collective venture, fail to open within three months departments and laboratories for tutoring courses on nursing and on English, French and Spanish languages at discounted prices (or subsidized by the government) and set up a few centers in Dhaka, Chitagong, Khulna and Rajshahi where our experienced nurses can appear first in National Nursing Licensure Exam, then in IELTS (a test to determine proficiency in English) and later in CGFNS Test At the end of the next financial year, as a yield, the coffer of Bangladesh Bank will be filled with at least US$ 10 billion, I am sure 100 percent

May I, please, dream forward to the day when after arriving at the Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport as I would be groping for a way out in the colossal Car Terminal a Bangladeshi young girl in her teens, for instance, from Golachipa upazilla pops her 'head with a ponytail' out the window on the driver's side and speaks out aloud: Je suis un chauffeur de taxi. Puis-je vous aider, monsieur? (I am a taxicab driver. May I help you, sir?)? Surprised, I would react, "Vous ne regardez pas de français. Sont vous Bangladeshi, en tout cas?" (You don't look French. Are you Bangladeshi, anyway?). The chauffer jumps out of her car and screams: Hou la! Oui, je suis Fatima du Bangladesh! (Wow! Yes, I am Fatima from Bangladesh!).