Overseas job drops by 10pc, remittance rises by 17pc

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Bangladesh has seen a downward trend in outgoing labour migration this year in comparison to the last year. Despite the downward trend, the country saw a record-breaking inflow of remittances this year.

Until November this year, 6,04,060 Bangladeshi people migrated to overseas countries and $ 16.67 billion came into the country as remittance, according to the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training. In the same time period last year, 6,84,862 people migrated out of the country and $ 14.33 billion entered the country as remittance.

If the downward trend continued in December, there might be an overall 10 per cent drop in the yearly total of the overseas jobs, said a report published by the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit on Sunday.

The sent remittance, which is already the highest in the country’s history, might reach $ 18.19 billion, rising by 17 per cent at the end of this year, the report also predicted.

Malaysia—which was the second largest labour market for Bangladeshi migrants in 2018, and received 1,75,927 Bangladeshis that yeat—cancelled its agreement with Bangladesh and received so far only 488 Bangladeshis in 2019.

The report–titled Labour Migration Trend Report 2019–imputed the downward trend in the outgoing migration to this closure of the Malaysian market to Bangladeshi migrants.

It also said that United Arab Emirate did not open its market to Bangladesh in 2019.

The report said that the inflow of the remittances had seen a surge this year owing to the government incentives, provided to the migrant workers for sending remittances through banking channels.

The report further said that the outgoing migration pattern from Bangladesh did not change much as the overseas labour market did not broaden, rather shrank a little while official recording of remittances reached its zenith due to inflow through banking channels.

Though the overseas market being of 173 countries, 95 per cent people migrated to only 14 to 15 countries and Saudi Arabia alone received 60 per cent of all the labours.

The trend also did not see any change skill-wise or contract-duration-wise as 55 per cent of all the labours were either unskilled or semiskilled. And most of migrants went abroad on the basis of short-term contract.

Women labour migration from Bangladesh increased 4.52 per cent this year despite the overall downward trend. A total of 97,430 women with an average age of 27 migrated abroad and 70 per cent of them were married and 30 per cent of them were divorced or widowed.

Still the country was abuzz with the issues of abuse of women migrants abroad, especially in Saudi Arabia. About 131 women came back dead to the country from Saudi Arabia in the last four years, said the report.

Due to abuse, about 3000 women from Saudi Arabia returned home this year alone, said the RMMRU report.

It said that as of October, 1,206 women took shelter in the Bangladeshi embassy in Riyadh of Saudi Arabia this year and 93 of them were ill while 16 of them were pregnant.
Source: http://www.newagebd.net

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