The New Nation - Internet Edition

IT is no overstatement to say that remittances sent home by Bangladeshi workers overseas is providing an invaluable support to the economy. But experts are of the opinion that the potentials of earnings from remittances have been only partly exploited. They say that there are opportunities to further increase the flow of remittances provided government goes for proactive policies and implements them within a time-frame. The first requirement appears to be the creation of wider facilities so that overseas workers find it convenient to send remittances home through the official channels.

Most of the time, expatriate workers who are not accustomed to banking consider it easy to rely on the hundi operators. With some proactive steps from Bangladeshi banks and money changing houses abroad, this hundi culture can further decline. Therefore, there is need for both expanding the official remitting capacities abroad and steps to attract expatriate workers to those. Bangladesh missions abroad must be made truly active to carry out their representative role for the workers. They should engage sincerely with foreign employers and others so that the latter are obliged to settle their dues as contracted with the workers.

Internally, government should set up more training institutes for young people seeking employment abroad to give them the skills that have demand abroad. This step will increase the supply of skilled workers and they would be earning notably more than the mainly unskilled ones who presently go abroad. The activities of a section of manpower exporting firms found engaging in malpractices should be brought to an end. The nationalised commercial banks (NCBs) may extend loans to workers going abroad on easy terms of repayment so that they do not face hardships in paying the fees of manpower exporters.