Expat Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Nurul Islam has come under fire and agreed to show-cause the ‘syndicate’ which control manpower business in Malaysia.
He announced his decision at a press conference held at his office Tuesday morning.
In the briefing, the minister denied that any of his family members are involved in the syndicate, which manipulate workers and charge hefty amount of money to send workers to Malaysia.
At the beginning of the press conference, he said the Malaysian government did not inform Bangladesh about not taking workers through the syndicate.
He said that any victim can file an application about his or her problem.
When he was bombarded with questions from the media, he announced that he would show-cause the syndicate.
The minister said, we don’t control the 10 agencies that you are talking about, rather they are appointed by the Malaysian government.
We will show-cause them as a number of allegations were raised against them, but before that we need to collect data.
The minister admitted that we are not getting a clear picture about the current decision taken by the Malaysian government.
“We have sent a note verbale to the Malaysian authorities and hopefully by tonight we will get a clear picture,” he said.
He claimed that the labour market in Malaysia is still open but now they want to change the recruiting process.
Still 30,000 workers who got visa are waiting to fly and Malaysia did not say these people cannot go, he added.
Expat Secretary Namita Halder and other officials were also present at the briefing.