The history of foreign labor market of Bangladesh in different countries of the world is quite old, around 50 years. Malaysia is one of the countries which are considered very important for manpower export.
Bangladeshi workers have been migrating to different countries since 1976. According to the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), from that time to 2023, more than 1.6 million workers have migrated from Bangladesh to different countries.
Malaysia is the fourth country in the list of manpower exports from Bangladesh. But even then, Bangladesh has gone through various tensions regarding the labor market of this country. The labor market of Bangladesh was closed at various times.
The labor market of all countries, including Bangladesh, was closed again from June this year.
Exactly when the Bangladeshi labor market in Malaysia? Why is the labor market in Bangladesh so tense or closed? The labor market of all countries, including Bangladesh, was closed again from June this year.
Exactly when the Bangladeshi labor market in Malaysia? Why is there so much tension or closure with the labor market in Bangladesh?
History of Bangladesh labor market in Malaysia
Bangladesh’s journey to the labor market of different countries started from 1976, but this journey started two years later in the Malaysian market. Only 23 workers went to Malaysia in 1978.
This information is available on the Bangladesh Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) website.
However, people involved in Bangladesh’s labor market, speaking to manpower export experts, said that the two countries formally signed a manpower recruitment agreement in 1992.
The statistics of more than 20 countries since the beginning of the labor market journey till 2023 are given on this website.
These statistics show that the most manpower has gone to Saudi Arabia so far. The number is about 58 lakh. As a percentage, about 36 percent of the total manpower exports are to Saudi Arabia.
The second step is the United Arab Emirates. More than 2.6 lakh people go to this country till 2023. And Oman is on the third position in the list of manpower exports from Bangladesh. There is a labor market of about 19 lakh people in this country. Next is Malaysia. More than 14.5 million workers have gone there so far. Malaysia has more than nine percent of Bangladesh’s labor market.
The statistics given on BMET’s website show that 23 workers first went to Malaysia in 1978. No workers went to Malaysia the following year, but only three workers went there in 1980.
For the next two years, no Bangladeshi went to the Malaysian labor market. After two years again in 1983, 23 people went to Malaysia. After that, no worker went to this country again for two years. But in 1986, a maximum of 530 Bangladeshis went to the Malaysian labor market.
Analyzing the data of this website, it can be seen that from 1978 to 1989, the Bangladeshis traveled irregularly to the labor market in Malaysia.
However, from 1990 to 2023, the journey of Bangladeshi workers to the market of this country increased continuously. Although this labor market has been closed at various times, till now only in 2023 the highest number of workers from Bangladesh have gone to the country. More than 351,000 people went to that country last year.
However, Riazul Islam, the current president of Bayra, an organization of manpower exporters in Bangladesh, claims that the first Bangladeshi labor market started in Malaysia in 1990. That year he was the first to send 500 workers to Malaysia.
Islam told BBC Bangla, ‘Unfortunately or fortunately in 1990, I was the first to send 500 people to Malaysia for a tree planting project. That’s the beginning. This is official. Because when the Bangladeshi embassy gives the seal, that is official.’
I got 500 jobs first. But the logistics there were not good. There was no toilet, no health sanitation in the garden. There was no camping, the food was not good, there were big mosquitoes, tigers, snakes in the forest at that time,’ said Mr. Islam
Meanwhile, Kuala Lumpur-based Bangladeshi expatriate journalist Ahmadul Kabir said that in 1986, 530 people were taken from Bangladesh as laborers to work in palm and rubber plantations.
The truth of Kabir’s information can be found in the statistics available on BMET’s website.
Kabir told BBC Bangla, ‘In 1986, 530 workers were first sent from Bangladesh to Malaysia to work in the garden. In continuation of this, in 1992, Malaysia made a formal employment agreement with Bangladesh. In the same process, agreements were also made with Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan in the same year.
According to the information obtained on the BMET website, 1,385 workers from Bangladesh went to Malaysia in 1990 for the first time after 1978. Next year this number will increase.
At the same time, after the agreement was signed in 1992, the number of Bangladeshi workers in the Malaysian labor market increased almost sevenfold. This number increased in the following years.
In this way, the labor market of Bangladesh in Malaysia gradually developed, but this market was closed due to various reasons.
When and why did this labor market close?
After the first formal agreement with Malaysia in 1992 on the employment of Bangladeshi workers, the labor market was going well for several years. But after a few years it stopped. Later in 1996, the country’s labor market was opened again.
Then again in 2000, considering their own needs, the government of that country allowed the recruitment of workers from Bangladesh through special approval.
Ali Haider Chowdhury, the former secretary general of BAIRA, called the labor market in Malaysia as an ‘unstable market’.
Chowdhury said, ‘It is a total unstable market. After opening in 1992, it suddenly closed without any notice. After being closed for a long time, it opened again in 96. After working for six-seven months it stopped again. In this way, the market was closed four or five times.
Bangladesh started sending workers again in 2006. But Bangladesh was banned from the labor market in Malaysia in 2009 after a large number of illegal Bangladeshis were caught.
After the negotiations between the two countries, a new agreement was signed between Bangladesh and Malaysia in 2012. Bangladeshi workers started going to Malaysia again from April 2013 based on the memorandum of understanding regarding the employment of workers in the ‘JiTuji’ system signed between the two countries in November of that year. But Mahathir Mohamad’s government closed it in 2018 due to various allegations including the violence of the syndicate in sending workers.
In December 2021, the Malaysian government signed a memorandum of understanding with Bangladesh on the deployment of workers. But still the recruitment of staff was stopped. Because only 25 recruitment agencies are informed about the decision to take workers from Malaysia. Bangladeshi agencies oppose this decision. The government of Bangladesh also disagreed on the issue. Since then, only letters have been exchanged between the governments of the two countries for six months, and the meeting of the joint working group has been repeatedly postponed by Malaysia.
On June 2 of that year, a joint working group meeting of the two countries in Dhaka in the presence of Bangladesh’s Expatriate Welfare Minister Imran Ahmad and Malaysia’s Human Resource Minister M Saravanan resolved the issue.
Chowdhury, the former secretary general of Bayara, said, ‘In that agreement, a technical clause was added between the two governments, that is, the government of Bangladesh will send a list of all the valid agencies that have licenses to the government of Malaysia. They will pick from there how many people they will give.’
This agreement was opposed at the time. But due to the decrease in immigration, the government gave the highest priority to the export of manpower, Chowdhury said.
Bangladesh government sent a list of 1561 legitimate recruiting agencies at that time. From there, the Malaysian government approved the names of 101 agencies in their cabinet. One of these is the government agency that is BOSEL. The rest are private. This information was given by Chowdhury.
Chowdhury claims that ‘as a result of this agreement, some of the agencies approved by Malaysia are completely new and have no previous experience. There wasn’t much. Somehow they got enlisted. They also started sending people.’
Later in August 2022, the labor market opened again. Later, only in 2023, more than 351,000 workers left Bangladesh. This market is closed due to various reasons including unskilled workers, low wages, illegal immigration to Malaysia.
And the complaints like workers not getting work, torture and disappearance of workers have also been revealed in 2023. That year, the plight of the Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia also appeared in the reports of Malaysian mainstream media and human rights organizations.
At one point, concern was expressed by a statement from the United Nations Human Rights Office.
When contacted by BBC Bangla in May of this year, Tamoya Obokata, Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Slavery of the United Nations, said that there is enough reason to be concerned about the condition of Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia. An organized crime syndicate from both countries is involved in extorting money by cheating workers in the country.
‘A strong criminal gang has developed here in Bangladesh and Malaysia. Those who talk about jobs and good salary are deceiving the workers about Malaysia. They are extorting five to six times more money from the workers. As a result, workers are trapped in the cycle of debt,’ said Obokata.
“Furthermore, workers become illegal because they cannot find work in certain companies. Those who employ these illegal workers do not miss the opportunity to exploit them. As a result, the problem here is quite deep,’ he said.
According to him, the governments of both Bangladesh and Malaysia should revise the entire process of labor recruitment so that workers are not abused.
The labor market of Bangladesh in Malaysia has been closed since May 30 of this year.
Chowdhury, the former Secretary General of Baira, however, said that Malaysia has stopped hiring workers not only from Bangladesh but from all countries. They will take staffing decisions based on their needs.