RIYADH, 9 July — Nurus Safa Chowdhury, labor counselor at the Bangladesh Embassy here, has been recalled to Dhaka in the wake of a raging controversy about manpower supply to Saudi Arabia from the South Asian country.

The recall of Chowdhury, who had put in only 15 months of his normal two-year term, is said to have been in connection with some irregularities in manpower recruitment from Bangladesh. However, a source at the embassy described the allegation as baseless and played down the recall as a routine transfer.

The premature transfer comes against the background of a raging controversy in the Bangladeshi national press over recruitment agents jacking up the charges for manpower supply to Saudi Arabia.

The reports have quoted M.A.H. Salim, president of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agents (BAIRA), as saying that the situation has been created by the monopolistic control of 70 percent of the labor market by a recruiting agent in Riyadh and his group of 200 men. It identified the agent by his recruiting license No. 606. Subsequent inquiries revealed that the managing partner of this license in Bangladesh — Dr. Arif-ur-Rahman, a physician — works for a Saudi company here.

Other allegations in the English press in Dhaka relate to the Saudi Embassy which, it is pointed out, is applying subtle pressure on Bangladeshi workers to buy Saudi Arabian Airlines tickets, which are dearer than those of Bangladesh national carrier Biman on the same route. It is alleged that a number of Bangladesh Embassy officials are not performing their designated tasks properly, but rather involving themselves in visa business.

When contacted, Dr. Rahman claimed that he merely works for a Saudi company and does not have any associates.

"I do not run any business of my own in the Kingdom and I strongly refute all allegations against me in the Daily Star."

Responding to the charge that he has been cornering the manpower supply business, he said the allegations levelled against him by the BAIRA president, stemmed from personal vendetta. Arab News tried to get Salim’s response to Dr.Rahman’s charge that he was acting out of personal grudge against his former business associate.When Salim came on the line and heard that the caller was Dr. Rahman from Riyadh, he abruptly cut the line.

"In 1994," Dr. Rahman told Arab News, " I signed a contract in Dhaka on behalf of my company in which we paid 10 million taka to Mr. Salim and purchased 50 percent of his international recruiting business (Silver Line Associates).

Problems arose when Silver Line Associates was selected as one of the four recruiting agents to supply 2,500 workers to Korea who were charged 270,000 taka each contrary to the agreement and never paid our share of profit".

As for the charge that he is pushing up the recruitment fees, Dr. Rahman said that currently Silver Line is hiring around 900 workers for the Jeddah City Cleaning Project on behalf of a well-known Saudi company based in Jeddah.

"It is charging 130,000 taka from each worker," he added.