After a hiatus of eight years, Malaysia is finally set to recruit Bangladeshi manpower from next week, according to official sources.
The Malaysian government has recently sent a letter conveying that it is ready to recruit Bangladeshi workers under the government-to-government plus (G2G Plus) system, Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Nurul Islam told reporters.
He said the ministry has started processing work to export manpower to Malaysia from the next week, roughly 11 months after the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two
governments.
According to the sources, besides requesting Bangladesh to start sending workers, the Malaysian government has also sent a list of agencies they approved of to carry out the recruitment process.
“Probably, sending of workers would start from next week as the Bangladeshi recruiting agencies, which have been selected for handling the recruitment, are ready for the much-awaited process,” said an official at the manpower ministry.
Sources at Bestinet, a Malaysian IT company that has developed the online system to handle manpower recruitment from Bangladesh, also confirmed that Malaysia has sent a letter to Bangladesh requesting to initiate the process of sending
workers.
The Malaysian government stopped hiring Bangladeshi workers in 2009 after experiencing influx of illegal
workers between 2007 and 2008.
After several attempts by the Bangladesh government, Malaysia agreed to recruit Bangladeshi workers selecting Bangladesh as a source country for sending workers. In 2013, Malaysia signed an agreement for receiving workers from Bangladesh under the G2G mechanism. But, the initiative failed as Bangladesh government could send only 8,000 workers.
In February last year, the two countries signed the G2G Plus deal involving the recruiting agencies for selecting and sending workers to Malaysia in five sectors to avoid malpractices.
Under the agreement, about 1.5mn workers are likely to be sent to Malaysian in five years to work in tree plantation, construction, service, agriculture and manufacturing sectors.
Malaysia, home to nearly 6mn foreign workers, is already a key manpower market for Bangladeshi nationals – about 600,000 are estimated to be in the country, mostly working in the
plantation sector.
Officials in Dhaka expect that the online process would reduce the cost of sending workers to Malaysia.
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