Fallouts of shrinking manpower export
Bangladesh has been losing its manpower market in the Middle East at a fast pace during the last 15 months, raising serious concern among the recruiting agencies and the government policymakers.
What is more worrying is that there has been a negative flow of manpower to the largest Bangladeshi manpower market, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), since the beginning of the year 2009. Of the estimated 7.0 million expatriate Bangladeshis 2.0 million are employed in the KSA, followed by 1.4 million in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and 1.4 million each in Oman and Kuwait.
According to a newspaper report, only 17000 Bangladesh got employment in the KSA in last 15 months while more than 31000 returned home from that country during the period on expiry of their contractual employments. In contrast to the latest development, on and average 150,000 to 200,000 Bangladeshi workers used to get employment in that country in earlier years.
Similarly, Kuwait, where the annual flow of Bangladeshi workers averaged between 30,000 and 40,000 since 2001, recruited only 21 Bangladeshis in last 15 months. The situation is also discouraging as far as recruitment by the UAE is concerned. The recruitment of Bangladeshis by that country dropped by nearly 50 per cent in 2009 compared to that of the previous year.
The global recession that had also hit the oil-rich Arab countries, to some extent, led to the decline in the recruitment of foreign workers. With a marked improvement in recession situation and rise in oil prices, these countries, after a brief pause, have started recruitment of foreign workers, mostly from Nepal, India and the Philippines. They are found to be not interested to employ Bangladeshi workers in large numbers.
The people involved in manpower business attribute the substantial decline in the export of Bangladeshi workers to the Middle Eastern countries to the involvement of the Bangladeshi passport-holding Rohingyas in various criminal activities, particularly in the KSA, and a negative campaign unleashed, allegedly, by certain quarters in the Arab countries against the incumbent government. The local manpower recruiters have a feeling that the Bangladesh missions in the countries concerned and the foreign ministry have failed to counter such campaign effectively.
The situation is not anything better either in manpower exports to the Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Singapore and Korea. Malaysia that had frozen recruitment of Bangladeshi workers started recruiting Bangladeshis since the year 2006 following persuasion by the Bangladesh authorities and agreed to employ nearly 100,000 Bangladeshi workers. But due to irregularities indulged in by a section of dishonest local manpower recruiting agents and unauthorized entry of Bangladeshi workers, Malaysia has virtually stopped recruitment from Bangladesh.
If the current trend in manpower export persists, it is unlikely to take a long time for the country to feel its pinch, particularly in terms of annual remittance flow that has hit the historic high of nearly $10 billion. In addition to helping the country in maintaining a healthy balance of payments (BoP) situation, the manpower export has been providing a solution to the problem of unemployment, at least, partially. Moreover, the healthy remittance earning has had a great contribution to the ongoing economic transformation of rural Bangladesh.
The manpower ministry, apparently, is confident that the flow of Bangladeshi manpower to the Middle East would soon start improving. But the signals coming from these countries, even after persuasion through high-level visits to convince the authorities there, have not been that encouraging.
The economic and social fallout of the negative manpower flow to the major markets would be immense. It is not amply clear whether the government has any clear understanding of the far-reaching impact of the current developments or whether it is doing enough to reverse the trend.
The people, in most cases, are found to be sceptical about the government's seriousness in addressing major problems facing the country. However, the development of such sceptcism among the citizens has not been without any reason. They have witnessed how the men holding the rein of the country's administration fail to tackle urgent problems because of their built-in apathy. This is nothing particular about the incumbent government. The past governments did also perform poorly in tackling many problems of serious nature.
It is expected that the government would take up the manpower export issue with due seriousness and try to convince the countries concerned to recruit greater number of Bangladeshis. The government may try to convince some powerful countries to use their influence over the oil-rich Arab countries in matters of dispelling misgivings, if there is any, about the current Bangladesh administration.
The government should have no reason to take the manpower issue lightly since the country can hardly afford any decline its remittance earning. Rather, it has to go all-out to increase the same through the export of more of its workers side by side with efforts to create a large pool of exportable skilled manpower. This is all the more necessary because of the decline in demand for unskilled workers abroad. The manpower ministry should collect all necessary information on the requirements of the recruiting countries and make arrangements for creating exportable manpower fulfilling such requirements.
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