Steps had a need to develop skills for overseas job seekers
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The global coronavirus pandemic has damaged the jobs of over 50 lakh Bangladeshi migrant staff employed across the world and many of the migrants were either having or voluntarily returning home at the moment, according to migration experts.
After being impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak in conjunction with the global financial recession, thousands of Bangladeshi migrants have lost jobs abroad.
The inflow of remittance has dropped by 25 % in April following the COVID-19 outbreak in different parts of the world, officials said.
Remittances from Bangladeshi migrants working abroad were estimated at US$ 1.08 billion in April 2020, registering a fall of $353 million from the same month this past year.
It had been $1.43 billion in April 2019, based on the central bank’s latest statistics.
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies senior research fellow Anwara Begum told Modern that the federal government should take immediate steps to groom skilled manpower in the home considering their global demand aiming to resend them abroad and revive the remittance flow in the coming days.
Recalling the ‘actually fruitful labour migration of the 1980s’, she said, in the past Bangladeshi migrants used to get benefitted securing overseas jobs as migration involved zero cost.
‘In the 1980s, the country’s migrants could actually earn money often a lot more than the wages received by today’s migrants,’ she observed.
Anwara Begum suggested taking immediate steps to activate the returnee migrants with ‘labour intensive works’ in the home to scale up their skills.
Expatriates welfare and overseas employment ministry estimated that over two lakh staff returned home from February to March this year and half of these were jobless.
The ministry officials said that these were prepared to get a large numbers of returnees in the coming days, mostly from KSA, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and the Maldives.
The Middle East is a significant destination for Bangladeshi migrant workers. The amnesty in some Gulf countries has revealed a great number of migrant personnel from Bangladesh are in an irregular situation in those countries and listed below are fears that they might be repaid home.
An inter-ministerial committee, consisting of foreign affairs, home affairs, civil aviation, health insurance and expatriates welfare ministries, was working to oversee the repatriation of Bangladeshi workers.
ILO’s Regional Migration Specialist for South Asia Shabarinath Nair stressed the need for a strong inter-ministerial partnership in Bangladesh for successful reintegration of the migrants returning from destinations.
‘The ministry of labour and employment should be actively engaged with other ministries concerned, including social welfare, health insurance and family welfare, and youth and sports, to help them accommodate in the local markets and for social integration,’ he told MODERN.
Shabarinath said that collecting data of returnee migrants to map their current skills would be needed for their reintegration.
Officials and activists said that since jobless migrants continue steadily to return home, huge financial support is necessary for their reintegration.
The federal government should make an enormous investment from revenue cover reintegration, rehabilitation, skills development and employment generation for the unemployed work force that was getting larger, they said.
Migrant rights campaigners and civil society organisations recommended budgetary allocation of Tk 40,000 crore, which should be equal to 2 per cent of US $15 billion, the average annual remittance, sent by the migrants of Bangladesh.
The proposed national budget for the 2020-21 fiscal is scheduled to be positioned before the parliament on June 11.
Over 1.3 crore Bangladeshis are working abroad with 80 per cent of them in the centre East and South East Parts of asia.
In a recently available study, Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program, a community based migrants organisation, found that about 40 % migrants of Bangladesh were facing critical hardship abroad because of either losing their jobs or devoid of been paid their regular salaries because of this of COVID-19.
OKUP Chairman Shakirul Islam told New Age that their study was done on basis of the phone calls designed to 2,500 migrant personnel who spontaneously informed about their problems to the OKUP offices.
To tackle the COVID-19 challenge on migration, he needed creating a multi-stakeholder taskforce to develop a thorough reintegration guideline also to ensure its implementation.
‘The government should cover returnee migrant employees in the National Social BACK-UP Programme and support the returnee migrants for at least six months till they get involved in new livelihoods,’ he said.
Bangladesh Civil Society for Migration co-chair Syed Saiful Haque called for improved allocation and ensuring proper implementation of the budget to safeguard the interest of the migrant workers.
As a result of impact of COVID-19, he said that a huge allocation will be required for reintegration of returnees, rehabilitation, employment generation, exploring new job markets for migrants stuck in the home.
The ‘Youth Economic Survey’ conducted by IID in January, 2020 discovered that 63 per cent migrants prefer local business as reintegration plan but usage of credit was mentioned among the major challenges.
IID Chief Executive Syeed Ahamed said that since 20 lakh migrants might face deportation as a result of pandemic, the government must be sure affordable credit for them.
Migration authorities said that the federal government should cover the fees for renewal of visas of migrant workers, and for that reason, should allocate necessary amount in the 2020-2021 budget.
For skill development and capacity building, they said that the need assessment should be done urgently to prepare the labour force for the post-pandemic global labour market
EWOE ministry’s secretary Ahmed Munirus Saleheen said that the federal government has taken a 3-step reintegration programme for returnee migrants.
‘The government is helping the stranded migrants to get back home safe and each returnee migrant receiving BDT 5,000 at the airport as allowance,’ he said.
Beneath the midterm support scheme, he said, BDT 2 Billion was allocated to ensure that migrants could remove loans.
Additionally, the government would take initiatives to create new avenues for the migrants in the global market.
Source: https://www.newagebd.net
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