Bangladesh and Malaysia must break the recruitment syndicate’s grip

“Is the syndicate more powerful than the state?”

With that question to both Malaysia and Bangladesh, I ended my article, “Labour recruitment to Malaysia: Time to break the never-ending cycle,” published in The Daily Star on July 25, 2022.

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At the time, Bangladesh was preparing to reopen the Malaysian labour market after more than three years of suspension. My warning was simple: reopening should not reproduce a syndicate-driven model in which migrant workers bear the costs and the risks.

The consequences soon became clear.

Around 4,50,000 migrant workers from Bangladesh went to Malaysia between 2022 and 2024. But under the controversial recruitment system, the average migration cost reportedly reached Tk 5.44 lakh or more, against an officially fixed cost of Tk 78,990. Besides, when Malaysia set May 31 as the deadline for Bangladeshi workers to enter the country in 2024, at least 16,970 workers who had obtained clearance from the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), as well as valid visas and tickets, could not reach the Southeast Asian state because of mismanagement by government authorities and local recruiting agents.

My article “Labour recruitment to Malaysia: Syndicate wins, migrants suffer, country loses,” published in The Daily Star on June 8, 2024, mentioned how the 2022 warning had become reality.

Two years later and after three changes in government, the same Foreign Workers Centralised Management System (FWCMS)-based limited-recruitment architecture—and the related concerns about the syndicate—have returned. On August 21, 2026, Malaysia’s FWCMS published a list of 25 Bangladeshi recruiting agencies, raising concerns about a limited-agency recruitment model.

Amid the criticism, on August 28, FWCMS expanded the arrangement to 338 Bangladeshi agencies. Of these, 25 were directly selected agencies, 250 were associate agencies under them and another 62 would work under the state-owned Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Services Limited (BOESL).

However, several fundamental questions remain unanswered. For instance, based on what criteria were the agencies selected? Who controls access to employers, job orders and the digital recruitment chain? Is it still the same FWCMS system? And if recruitment is suspended once again, who will be held accountable?

Reopening, exploitation, suspension: The old cycle

Bangladesh-Malaysia labour migration has followed a familiar pattern over the past five decades: the market opens, allegations of excessive costs and irregularities arise, migrants suffer, recruitment is suspended and attempts are made at reform.

According to BMET, 23 Bangladeshis first went to Malaysia in 1978, while regular migration began in 1992. The market was almost frozen between 1997 and 2005. After Malaysia introduced the calling visa system in 2006, around 4,00,000 Bangladeshis went there in 2007 and 2008. Although the official migration cost was Tk 84,000, workers reportedly paid Tk 2 to Tk 3 lakh or more. Many struggled to find jobs, while a significant number of workers became undocumented. Then in 2009, Malaysia again stopped recruiting Bangladeshi workers. Three years later, in November 2012, Bangladesh and Malaysia signed a government-to-government (G2G) agreement, bypassing private recruiting agencies. But the system did not generate sufficient recruitment.

Meanwhile, the maritime trafficking crisis between 2012 and 2015 exposed a devastating side of irregular migration, with thousands of people attempting dangerous journeys by boat and trafficking camps and mass graves discovered along the Thailand-Malaysia border.

A decade of syndication and control

Private recruiting agencies returned under the G2G Plus arrangement in 2016. But instead of opening the market to all eligible agencies, Malaysia selected a syndicate of just 10 agencies, leading to allegations of monopoly, excessive costs and irregularities in the recruitment network and its associated digital system. FWCMS remained at the centre of the recruitment process.

In September 2018, after Mahathir Mohamad returned to power, Malaysia suspended the system, describing the recruitment process as a form of human trafficking and a money-making scheme. Yet in 2022, the same recruitment model resurfaced despite protests from civil society and recruiting agencies. And this time, 25 Bangladeshi recruiting agencies were initially selected, and later expanded. But once again, FWCMS sits at the centre of the recruitment process.

FWCMS is developed and operated by Bestinet, a Malaysian private company associated with Aminul Islam Bin Abdul Nor. A Malaysian citizen of Bangladeshi origin, Aminul has been identified in media reports as a central figure in Malaysia’s migrant recruitment system for the past decade, alongside influential actors within powerful circles in both countries.

According to media reports, under the syndicate system in 2023 and 2024, the registration fee per worker was set at 100 Malaysian ringgit, equivalent to around Tk 2,700 at the time. Instead, workers were charged Tk 1,07,000, of which Tk 1,00,000 allegedly had to be sent to Bestinet in Malaysia.

Recruiting agencies allege that around Tk 5,000 crore was siphoned out of the country through a “syndicate fee” of Tk 1,00,000 per worker. Another Tk 3,750 crore was allegedly siphoned off in the name of the “visa trade”. Altogether, the amount allegedly siphoned out of the country could be at least Tk 8,750 crore. The actual scale of corruption and irregularities, however, may have been even higher.

Between July 2024 and 2026, several cases were filed, several people were arrested, and investigations are still ongoing. Yet the fundamental recruitment architecture has not changed. Instead, concerns about the same model have resurfaced around FWCMS and the proposed list of recruiting agencies.

This raises a fundamental question: how can a private recruitment architecture become so influential in a system involving two sovereign governments? Are the actors behind it more powerful than the governments of Bangladesh and Malaysia? And if they are not, why has the system repeatedly been allowed to operate despite such serious allegations and irregularities?

The concern is regional

Nepal has raised serious concerns about the limited-agency model. After FWCMS published a list of 25 recruiting agencies, Nepal’s Ministry of Youth, Labour and Employment expressed concern and held an emergency meeting with Malaysia’s ambassador to Nepal to seek clarification. Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies also strongly objected, arguing that restricting recruitment to just 25 agencies would create a de facto monopoly, undermine healthy competition and ultimately open the door to the economic exploitation of migrant workers.

The concern has since become regional. On August 27, representatives of foreign recruitment agencies from Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar and Pakistan issued a joint statement calling for equal access, transparency and fair competition. They warned that no digital platform should become a vehicle for syndication, monopoly or exclusive control over migrant recruitment.

Disclose the entire mechanism

For a recruiting agency, a government office or a digital system, a migrant worker may be a number, but for a family, that worker is often its only hope. Migrants often sell land, borrow from relatives, mortgage property or take high-interest loans to finance the journey for a foreign job. If the job materialises, the family gradually recovers its investment. However, if the worker pays Tk 5 to 6 lakh and cannot travel, the debt does not disappear. Migrants and their families have to bear the burden of that sunk cost.

That is why the goal should not simply be how to reopen the market. It should be: how can it be reopened safely, transparently and affordably with the migrant worker at the centre?

Before recruitment begins this time, both governments should disclose the entire mechanism—a step that has been missing in previous recruitment cycles. Workers, recruiting agencies and the public deserve to know exactly how the process will work, who will control each stage, what each party in the process will be paid and what safeguards are in place. If a worker pays but cannot travel, who will refund the money? If the promised job does not exist, who will be held responsible? If a digital platform controls access to recruitment, who will oversee it and ensure that it cannot be used to create a monopoly?

These questions must be answered before recruitment begins. If there are limitations in the current Memorandum of Understanding, both governments should work to amend those as the agreement expires later this year. But transparency cannot wait. It must come before the first worker pays a single taka, accompanied by a clear commitment that anyone who violates the rules—however powerful—will face consequences.

The state must answer

Bangladesh-Malaysia labour migration has repeatedly been plagued by problems. For almost a decade, different versions of limited-agency recruitment have been accompanied by allegations of irregularities, controversy and migrant suffering. Yet those allegedly responsible for previous irregularities have not been held accountable, while the same network appears to have resurfaced in the next recruitment process under a different name. This cycle must be stopped. Both governments have a responsibility to ensure that migrant workers are protected from exploitation and that recruitment is transparent, fair and accountable.

Otherwise, the question “Is the syndicate more powerful than the state?” will remain unanswered.

This time, Bangladesh and Malaysia must prove that the state is more powerful than the syndicate.

Shariful Hasan is a labour migration expert and former journalist.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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