The New Nation - Internet Edition

THERE can be no denying that the current macro economic stability stems mainly from remittances sent by Bangladeshis doing overseas jobs. The country’s forex reserve surpassed the highest ever level of well over six billion US Dollars recently, thanks to the record number of people going out on employment abroad. Thus, the remittances sent home by the increasing number of expatriate workers is helping to underwrite the economic security of the country.

But sustaining this remittance flow depends vitally on retaining and expanding market shares in manpower export. Therefore, it is extremely important that the government should be aware of the growing threats. In recent months, workers have been expelled from Saudi Arabia, the biggest employer of Bangladeshi workers. Similar expulsion has been noted from Malaysia and some Gulf countries. Four thousand migrant Bangladeshi workers were arrested in Qatar the other day and deported on allegations of working there illegally. If this trend continues, then the goodwill among importers of Bangladeshi manpower will be shattered affecting manpower export.

It appears that Bangladeshis go to work places abroad in many cases dutifully but are cheated on arrival by their employers who do not honour their contracts with the workers. The workers do not receive their contracted salaries and are forced to live from hand to mouth. Under such circumstances, they drift away from their contracted employers and take up jobs elsewhere in the host countries for which they are charged with illegal work. But this cannot happen if the manpower export is better supervised to secure only proper contracts for the workers. The Bangladesh missions abroad need to be proactive for the enforcement of the contracts. It is imperative to consolidate manpower export so that neither the workers suffer nor manpower export earnings.