The government could not until now remove middlemen from the recruitment process to relieve workers seeking overseas jobs from their clutches as the prime minister had directed the Ministry of Expatriates Welfare and Overseas employment in November 2014.
Middlemen continue to trap and cheat workers who try to get overseas jobs after selling whatever property they own.
The middlemen spread their networks even at remote areas of the country in search of workers having any interest to work abroad.
They allure workers depicting dreams of rosy future only to cheat the non-suspecting village folks.
Despite the prime minister’s directives, the Ministry of Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment failed to take any credible steps against the middlemen as well as brokers operating in the manpower sector.
On July 20, an EWOE Ministry meeting chaired by additional secretary Jabed Ahmed took the a decision to hold a workshop of stakeholders to find the way to bring middlemen under the legal framework, said officials.
Worried over increasing number of Bangladeshi migrant workers getting trafficked to European and East Asian countries migrants rights campaigners underlined the need to free the manpower sector from brokers and middlemen.
Middlemen and brokers in collusion with recruiting agencies increased the costs of migration manifold causing untold sufferings to both female and male workers.
EWOE Ministry officials said that mainly around 1,200 recruiting agencies regulated by the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training send workers abroad with help from thousands of middlemen, who were beyond the purview of any regulatory mechanism.
Expatriate and Overseas Employment Ministry secretary in charge Nomita Halder told New Age Sunday that private recruiters at a meeting requested the government to suspend Section 19(3)of the Overseas Employment and Migrants Act 2013 which require the BMET as well as the private recruiting agencies to send workers enlisted in the government’s database.
She, however, said replying to a question that it would prove difficult to regulate middlemen as they were not visible.
Migrant rights campaigners said that bringing the brokers under regulations would reduce human trafficking and other harassment of ‘our workers abroad’.
WARBE development foundation chairman Syed Saiful Haque said that the recruiting agencies should be told to get their brokers and middlemen registered as their sub agents to bring them under the regulatory framework.
He said that unregistered middlemen and brokers should be treated as traffickers.
Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program chairman Shakirul Islam demanded that the workers enlisted with the government’s database should only be selected for overseas jobs.
Source: New Age
