Dhaka: 80% fewer workers going abroad

Bangladesh relies heavily on remittances from migrant workers in the Gulf or Southeast Asia. While up until 2017 a million workers were leaving each year, by 2020 there were only 200,000. Many now rely on informal money transfer systems.

Dhaka (AsiaNews) - Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of migrants leaving Bangladesh every year to go and work abroad has decreased by 80%. In 2017, at least one million workers went to other countries to seek their fortune, according to the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training, a government agency.

Over the next two years, the figure dropped to 0.7 million and 217,669 in 2020, the year the health emergency broke out. In 2021, the number rose slightly to 317,011. The decline was driven by shrinking markets in Malaysia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Singapore and Saudi Arabia, where Bangladeshi migrants find work more easily. 

The issue is of primary importance because at least 10 million Bangladeshi workers send remittances from abroad, contributing to the nation's economic development. Those who have returned home now struggle to find new employment and are waiting for the economy to rebound to return abroad. 

Subroto Gomes, who worked as a cook in Kuwait, had returned to Dhaka after the pandemic broke out. Now he is waiting for a new letter of employment. "I worked in a Kuwaiti restaurant for 10 years, then I got sick and came home," he told AsiaNews. "They hired someone else and I'm trying very hard to go back to the Gulf country, but I haven't gotten a visa yet."

The government says the situation is changing. "Many countries are lifting entry bans imposed during the pandemic," explained Sahidul Alam, director general of the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training. "We are getting more and more applications for our workers. Saudi Arabia has reopened their markets and so has Malaysia. We hope all the other countries will soon follow."

Over the past five months, remittances from abroad have dropped, the government source went on to clarify. He added that migrant workers prefer to send money through hundi (an informal money transfer system based on the word of honor and also known as hawala in the Islamic world) instead of using banks. But the main reason is that at the moment, workers who have returned to Bangladesh cannot get their previous jobs back. According to experts, Dhaka should try to put more pressure on neighboring countries to start taking in Bangladeshi workers again.