HC`s urgent notice to recruit Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia

As a result of the intensive diplomatic efforts of all concerned ministries of the Bangladesh government and the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, after the signing of the Bangladesh-Malaysia bilateral memorandum of understanding on December 19, 2021, the Malaysian government withdrew the ban issued four years ago on the recruitment of new workers from Bangladesh.

Later, after the recruitment process was finalized in the joint working group meeting held in Dhaka on June 2, 2022, the necessary networking hardware and software were installed in the respective offices of the two countries, and the Bangladeshi recruitment process started in Malaysia around August 2022.

According to the latest data, the Labor Department under the Ministry of Human Resources of Malaysia has approved the recruitment of 3,58,892 new Bangladeshi workers against the demand of 8,727 new workers and 1,34,595 new workers have already arrived in Malaysia. The remaining 2,25,000 Bangladeshi workers are in the process of arrival. If this trend continues, the Bangladesh High Commission is hopeful that approximately 500,000 new Bangladeshi workers will be employed in Malaysia within the next 2/3 years.

Meanwhile, it has been reported from various media, social media and private sources that some foreign workers are not getting proper jobs after arriving in Malaysia. Bangladesh High Commission has been informed that a number of Bangladeshi workers are also in trouble.

The High Commission, on its own initiative and with the assistance of the Malaysian authorities, took steps to solve the problem by taking electronic measures and was able to compel the employer to provide work to some of the workers, while trying to place the rest of the workers under new employers.

The Bangladesh High Commission feels that it is necessary to shed some light on the process of recruitment of foreign workers in Malaysia for the general public. If the Malaysian government's approval process for hiring foreign workers is transparent, not a single worker should be unemployed. Because, in Malaysia, there are branches of Labor Department all over the country. Only if they approve the application for recruitment of foreign workers after proper vetting, then the foreign workers will be guaranteed proper jobs, working environment, housing and wages. Moreover, according to the laws of Malaysia, the responsibility of ensuring the legal rights of all domestic and foreign workers rests with the Department of Labor and for that purpose the institution has been given organizational and legal powers. It is not possible for the embassy of any country to verify the demand for recruitment by 100% verification.

In this case, the embassy must rely on the approval of the Malaysian authorities. This applies to all sourcing country embassies including Bangladesh. In approximately 95% of the cases, the Bangladesh Embassy verifies the demand by verifying the documents related to the approval of various authorities in Malaysia. Remaining approximately 5% against demand is verified by embassy by visiting employer's office/project site etc. It is practically impossible for the Embassy to visit hundreds of projects/factories as well as thousands of employment agencies. This can only be done by the Malaysian Labor Department. So it is reasonable to send workers relying on the clearance from the Labor Department of Malaysia and this is what all other sending countries are doing. Moreover, if 100% of projects are visited by embassies to verify demand, the pace of worker arrival will be so slow that it will not be acceptable to anyone.

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