The New Nation - Internet Edition

Fifty unfortunate Bangladeshi job-seekers cheated by manpower agents came back home from Malaysia penniless a couple of days ago. They are from among thousands of job-seekers who are flown abroad with allure of jobs at fat salary so much so that they sold out even their landed property to pay fees of recruiting agents.

Litle over a week ago thousands of foreign job-seekers from Bangladesh were stranded at the Kuala Lumpur airport as they were told their employers did not come to receive them. More than 150 such Bangladeshis who were on a hunger-strike were whisked away from the Bangladesh Mission there by the Malaysian law enforcing agencies as the High Commission officials wanted them to vacate the HC premise. The incident made international news.

According to official statistics, Malaysia now employs 3,85,399 Bangladeshis. Some 1,57,000 Bangladeshis have gone to Malaysia since the recruitment process resumed 11 months ago. The job market there may absorb many more Bangladeshis but the harassment and sufferings that the manpower agents are subjecting job-seekers to carry the seeds of spoiling the opportunity, fear relevant quarters.

The government has responded by sending a delegation from the expatriate welfare and overseas employment ministry. The return of the latest batch of unfortunate Bangladeshi job-seekers followed the trip of the official delegation to Malaysia. It has thus become crystal clear that the problem of deception of Bangladeshi job-seekers abroad cannot be solved just by sending a delegation or two to the host country. This is because those who commit wrongs in sending people abroad without assured jobs or without valid travel documents are based very much in Bangladesh and the irregularities in manpower business can be tackled by taking the offenders to task. And it would not be a herculean task to identify the perpetrators of the crime and punish them.

Spot investigation of problems faced by expatriate Bangladeshis should normally be dealt with by the Bangladesh missions abroad. People have started raising question as to what the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur was doing to deal with the situation. The mission there could have no bigger responsibility than monitoring the situation of the job workers who, together with those in the Middle East and Europe, are the second largest source of foreign exchange earnings for Bangladesh.

Complaints against a section of manpower recruiting agencies are many and varied. This section of agents promises the recruits higher pay to justify the collection of service charge at higher rates. The recruiting agents in question atract clients also by assuring atractive service conditions in healthy environments, but many recruits end up in lowly-paid and hazardous jobs.

The causes behind the sad plight of the job seekers are two-fold. Some recruiting agents fly the workers to Kuala Lumpur on late Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays even though Malaysian employers do not send people to the airport to receive them during the weekend (Saturday and Sunday). They take the plea of scarcity of seats in flights on other days but remain callous about the food and accommodation needs of job-seekers during their transit from the airport to the place of employment

Some agencies are reported to have been sending people in access of the genuine employment visas they get from Malaysian employers. This they do sometimes also in collusion with a section of dishonest employers who allegedly issue extra visas for money and put recruits into trouble. Some such helpless people find no other alternative but to stay back against all odds because they find nothing back at home to depend on. When all these aspects are taken in view the solution of the problem appears to lie in disciplining the erring manpower recruiting agencies.