DHAKA, 20 July 2005 — Bangladesh’s export of manpower to Gulf countries, the second biggest source of foreign exchange earnings, has fallen by 19 percent.
Reluctance of many countries to hire foreign workers, militant trade unionism of expatriate Bangladeshis and the government’s restrictions on citizens taking up undocumented overseas jobs have resulted in the 19 percent slide in the period January-May this year as compared to the corresponding period in 2004.
Sources in the Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry said yesterday the decline in manpower export was also due to an unwillingness of foreign countries to recruit unskilled workers. They now seek skilled or at least semiskilled workers.
However, the amount of money sent home by Bangladeshis for the same period increased by about the same percentage, mainly because of an increased hiring of skilled and professional people abroad.
“The upward trend in remittance reflects the rising employment of skilled people abroad,” said a high official of the ministry.
The sources said a total of 91,447 Bangladeshis went abroad for jobs in January-May this year, posting an 18.85 percent decline from 113,056 in the same period in 2004. The remittance earning, on the other hand, went up by 18.73 percent in that period this year, with the country fetching $17.37 billion against the $14.63 billion for the corresponding period in 2004.
Officials in the ministry said the government’s recent initiative to keep a close watch on people going abroad for jobs has discouraged many to leave the country before receiving job confirmation. The government also had to temporarily suspend manpower export to Jordan and Brunei after aggressive demonstrations and strikes by expatriate Bangladeshis. Bangladeshi workers also attacked the country’s embassy in Kuwait and some of them stayed away from their jobs, making Kuwaiti employers wary of hiring people from the South Asian nation. Manpower export to Malaysia is yet to resume even though a memorandum of understanding was signed back in October 2003.
Also contributing to the decline in manpower export is the policy of nationalization of jobs in countries such as Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
