Decision on sending Bangladeshis to Malaysia after Nov 25, minister says

Malaysia will reopen its labour market for Bangladeshi workers shortly, Imran Ahmed hopes.

The expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment minister is also hopeful that the decision to resume sending Bangladeshi workers to Malaysia will be taken after meetings of a joint working group scheduled for Nov 24 and 25 in Dhaka.

Imran was briefing reporters in the capital on Tuesday about his recent visit to Malaysia.

In 2016, the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding in which Malaysia agreed to recruit workers from Bangladesh in five different sectors under the “government-to-government plus” scheme.

Ten Bangladeshi recruitment agencies were permitted to send workers to Malaysia under the five-year contract.

But the Malaysian government stopped issuing visas to Bangladeshi workers in 2018 after allegations surfaced that the workers were paying Bangladeshi agents 10 times more the money fixed in the MoU for work permit and plane tickets.

On Nov 6, Imran travelled to Kuala Lumpur as part of the government’s efforts to have the Malaysian labour market reopened for Bangladeshi workers.

During the visit, he took part in a discussion with Malaysian Human Resource Minister M Kulasegaran.

Imran also called on Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and sought his assistance for reopening their labour market for Bangladesh.

“During the meeting, the Malaysian government agreed to reopen the country’s labour market for Bangladeshis at the earliest time possible,” said the minister.

In the meeting, the two ministers also discussed recruitment of Bangladeshi labourers by Malaysia at the minimum migration cost, the extent of involvement of recruiting agencies in both countries, medical tests, social and economic security of the migrants and sharing of data.