Editorial
Protecting overseas job seekers against swindlers
New rules must be strictly enforced
It is welcome news that the government has decided to address the issue of overseas recruitment by formulating a set of rules that will protect the job seekers' rights. They are now highly vulnerable to swindling by recruiting agencies and middlemen across the board. The job seekers are now exploited in various ways and many of them have ended up paupers, after losing everything in their bid to get a job abroad. In some importing countries they land up in jobs they had not contracted for.
So, it is time the government did something to protect the job seekers' interests. Obviously, the most important thing is to organise the whole business of recruiting workers in a planned way. The government's decision to make it mandatory for the recruiting agents to select job seekers from the databank of the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) is certainly a move in the right direction. The expatriates welfare ministry is going to introduce a website for this purpose which will give people access to information in this regard.
The unscrupulous middlemen usually target the gullible and uneducated in rural areas who don't hesitate to spend their last penny for getting a job abroad. But once the new rule comes into effect, the BMET will be aware of what the recruiters are doing and chances of the workers being cheated will be eliminated to a great extent. In other words, the recruiting process will no longer be a shady deal between unsuspecting, innocent job seekers and fraudulent recruiters. Instead, it will become transparent.
It is really unfortunate that our workers, whose contribution to the national economy of a host country is huge, are being sometimes treated shabbily. Obviously, the employers are not always kind to the workers, but there is no denying that in most cases the recruiting agents and their associates in importing countries are responsible for the misery of the workers. All sorts of irregularities are resorted to, with the sole objective of maximising profit. The workers have been suffering, as there is nobody to plead their cases. The Bangladesh missions abroad should look after interests of the workers in an energetic way.
Sending workers abroad is more than an issue of securing employment for them: it has a direct bearing on our image as a nation. So, it must be ensured that no legal or procedural lacunae exist in the scheme of overseas employment. Only then can we hope to have our workers' rights and privileges protected abroad.
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