Turn it into an Advantage
Lest the government machinery is thrown off-balance when the deluge sweeps in we deem it a duty to share the rumblings of a storm our antenna has lately caught. We have it on the authority of the Malaysian Deputy Interior Minister Datuk Tajol Gazali, as reported in a major Bangla daily yesterday, that one million expatriate workers might be sent packing by the severe economic depression in Malaysia. Of them, a little more than one hundred thousand are likely to be Bangladeshis on whom though no termination notice has yet been served. So, the first thing the government ought to do is join issue with the Malaysian government to try and head off the unscheduled home-coming of so many Bangladeshis. Failing which, the attempt should be to persuade the Malaysian authorities to at least reduce the number of returnees to a tolerable extent.
We realise that manpower export is coming to a fresh crunch from the depressive unemployment situation across the whole of South East Asian region caught lately in the whirlwind of a deep financial crisis. During the last couple of years we have seen waves of deportation of our wage-earning nationals from abroad breaking on our shores in close succession of surprises.
It is high time that in conjunction with our efforts to break new grounds in manpower export we stood ready with a blueprint to utilise the services of the returnees. To the best of our knowledge, there is no government policy to absorb or harness their skills acquired the hard way overseas when they are back to the country. Let their technical, supervisory and management skills be fully identified, categorised and inventoried for early utilisation in the various sectors of our economy. We cry hoarse on human resource development groping for a breakthrough but here is something tangible to go forward with: the returnees cannot only cater to our growing needs for variegated skills but also help groom technicians in the country under a specific skill multiplication programme if this is adopted. They can really be the catalyst for change we are looking for.
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