Recruitment companies in Bangladesh have welcomed the recent decision of the Malaysian government to open up their market to all agencies.
On Tuesday, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad after a meeting on migration said it wanted to increase competition among recruiting agencies to streamline the labour market.
Former Joint Secretary of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) Shamim Ahmed Chowdhury told Bangla Tribune, “We welcome the decision.”
We don’t see any obstacle to implement the decision, he said.
“It will take several months to have the new system and we have already discussed the issue with the government,” he added.
Migration expert Shakirul Islam told Bangla Tribune that the existing system of sending workers by only 10 agencies has created a monopoly business in the sector.
The government had taken several steps to reduce the migration cost to Tk 30,000 under government-to-government arrangement, but it didn’t work, he said.
There was a conspiracy where the recruitment agencies were involved and the cost went up to as high as Tk 5 lakh, he added.
Emphasising on safe migration, Islam said number is not important, rather welfare of the workers should be ensured.
At present, there are 1,181 recruiting agencies operating in Bangladesh and out of them, only 10 are allowed to send workers to Malaysia.
According to statistics, in the last two years, the agencies sent about two lakhs workers to the Southeast Asian country.