Bangladesh claims Malaysia not detaining its citizens for now
17 July 2017 Print page
Bangladesh ministers tell seminar on Bangladeshi manpower in Dhaka that both countries have agreed to solve illegal worker issue through discussions.
PETALING JAYA: Malaysia will cease nabbing Bangladeshi workers temporarily as Dhaka and Putrajaya have agreed to solve the illegal workers’ issue through discussions.
Bangladesh Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Nurul Islam said the country’s high commission in Kuala Lumpur was maintaining close contact with the Malaysian government to find a solution to undocumented Bangladeshi workers.
Bangladesh media said the minister made the announcement on the suspension of the crackdown against its workers when addressing a manpower seminar in Dhaka yesterday.
Malaysia’s immigration department has launched an operation to round up thousands of illegal foreign workers after a deadline for registering them passed on June 30.
Many of those detained were Bangladeshis.
Additional secretary at the Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry Javed Ahmed told the same seminar in Dhaka that Malaysia had already rehired 250,000 Bangladeshi workers, providing them with proper documents.
He said the problems of many other Bangladeshis working in Malaysia could also be solved by taking similar initiatives, the Prothom Alo news portal reported.
“Kuala Lumpur is also considering hiring 22,000 Bangladeshi workers on a G2G (government to government) basis.”
Another portal, bdnews24.com, said the Bangladesh government was working to open up new labour markets in other countries, including Japan and Russia.
Bangladesh had sent 554,000 workers abroad in the first six months of 2017, Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training director-general Selim Reza told the seminar.
He said by the year-end, one million workers would be sent, breaking records of the past.
He said the highest number of workers sent overseas in a year was 875,000 but he did not state when that number was achieved.
Source : http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2017/07/17/bangladesh-claims-malaysia-not-detaining-its-citizens-for-now/