The high migration cost damper

While all of these are attributable, in parts, to the export slump, the single disincentive appears to be the high fees asked from the intending migrants.

Just how prohibitive the costs can be is gauged from the Korean Federation of Small Business awarding contracts to four recruitment agencies for 200 trainee employees from Bangladesh at a fee of Tk 1.92 lakh each but the agencies are reportedly charging Tk eight lakh each. Taka five lakh seems to be the minimum asking rate. Whereas only a few months back, a Bangladeshi worker would be charged Tk 1.4 to 1.7 lakh for a job in Saudi Arabia (salaried at Tk 5600 per month -- that too underpaid in the end), the rate has now shot up by Tk 70,000 to Tk 90,000 per head.

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One can understand that the cost of ticket has increased overtime due to higher fuel price and that the dollar value has appreciated, but the kind of hike effected in the migration fees cannot be explained away in those terms at all.

These are high costs for the job-seekers who are mostly poor and have to mobilise the money by lending or selling family property. And if he would be lucky not to have been entrapped by a fake agent and have landed on a job, at the month's end he could be receiving less than even the paltry sum he had contracted for.

So, what happens if he has paid the high fees to get a job is that he desperately looks for raising the money he had spent to land abroad. He does part time job, or an odd job engaging himself in small trade or might switch jobs that strictly he had not been authorised to do under terms of the contract. He might be lured away by a local firm on a better offer, which the latter could afford because there was no plane fare or other costs to be paid for.

Since there are more seekers of job than there are jobs for, the recruitment agencies, both here and overseas, tend to exploit the situation by entering into an unhealthy competition to raise the migration fees. This is proving counterproductive for the sending and hosting countries and, perhaps no less, for the manpower export agencies who risk losing business in the end. It's time the governments in exporting and importing countries in consultation with representatives from the approved manpower agencies look into the whole issue of migration fees and bring these down to a realistic, affordable level.