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Published: 08 July 2018

Corruption in manpower recruitment for Malaysia

M S Siddiqui

The unemployment rate measures with the number of people actively looking for a job as a percentage of
the labor force. Unemployment in Bangladesh is about 4.20 percent.

Migration has become so popular in this country that demography wise 4.9 percent of the total working
age population of Bangladesh are now migrant workers (CPD, 2015).

Currently, there are more than 1.0 million Bangladeshis working abroad and are sending remittances to
the country (BMET, 2015). Total remitted amount was equivalent to around 8 percent of Bangladesh's
gross national income (GNI) during that period.

Remittances rose to over $15 billion in 2017 or about 8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and
have become a major source of foreign exchange earnings, second to ready-made garments.

These expatriates earn valuable foreign currency but the hurdle and cost of obtaining the overseas
employment is very expensive and troublesome for the common people. The average cost of financing
migration currently stands around USD 2,600 to USD 3,900 which amounts to three-year-worth of income
for the average Bangladeshis.
It has been revealed that 5.60 percent of the cost goes to the middlemen (informal agents) and recruiting
agencies as commissions for facilitating the migration process (ILO, 2013). The rest is spent on airfare,
passport, visa, medical certificate, and other expenses. Importantly the aforementioned ILO study
separated the visa related costs and middlemen's rents.

Individual expatriate and nation as a whole are not having optimum benefits of their hard work due to high
migration cost despite full potential to overseas employment. One of the reasons for the high employment
cost is the complicated government registration and approval process. These common people are unable
to take those permissions of their own and go through middlemen and private recruiting agencies in
Bangladesh.

They are forced to pay an excessively high price for the visa and migration-related expenditures. The
presence and activities of these middlemen, both in the host and beneficiary country, are non-transparent
creating and making use of asymmetric information to distort the market.

One particular study reveals that there are more than 50,000 middlemen currently active in the manpower
export sector of Bangladesh. There agent and sub-agent and sub-sub-agents to reach the manpower
companies and the aspirant expatriate go through process 'change hands' several times with attendant
cost escalation at each stage. Middlemen's rent is the most significant source of the informal migration
costs.

There are illegal and risky methods of going abroad through different air, sea and land routes. Some of
the unfortunate citizens also take risky illegal process to go abroad due to difficult formal employment
process. The predominant use of informal channels increases the cost of migration and leads to
damaging and unsafe migration.

Initially, manpower agencies used to receive commissions from overseas employers. The expense for the
air ticket was typically borne by the employer. Now, due to increased international competition and
dishonest intermediaries, these charges are borne by the migrant. This has become a major hurdle for
expatriate migration and made the overseas employment non-feasible.

Malaysian authority was always un-happy with Bangladeshi expatriate because of huge number of illegal
migrants. These illegal expatriates are either entering into Malaysia through different routes and over stay
of some workers after expires of visa.

Malaysian authority is also unhappy with requirement of un-skilled labors against technical positions and
may other manipulation of documents. The Malaysian authority had halted recruitment in early 2009.

In late 2012, Malaysia and Bangladesh sign a contract for a state-level recruitment, but since then only
about 10,000 have been recruited in plantation sector in Malaysia, home to some 6,00,000 Bangladeshis.
Unfortunately the same process was also corrupt and slow and number of expatriate came down to very
low level.

Both the government again changed to new G2G Plus system and allowed manpower agencies to recruit
expatriate along with government employment department. Under the program, Malaysia informed
Bangladesh that it appointed Synerflux Sdn Bhd, which will be the "sole and exclusive entity" to develop,
maintain and manage a fully online system known as Bangladeshi Workers Management System
(BWMS).

Malaysia reportedly wants to implement a fully online system known as Bangladeshi Workers
Management System (BWMS) and assigned Synerflux to be the "sole and exclusive entity" that will
develop, maintain and manage the system.

The company will have offices both in Bangladesh and Malaysia, and supervise workers' registration and
eligibility, and delivery of visas. It is understood that Synerflux is a Malaysian private IT company and
allegedly relative of an ex-minister, which will manage the overall recruitment process online. They have
selected a cartel of 10 manpower agents of Bangladesh to manage the entire process in exchange for
huge money.

Under the G2G Plus agreement, the appointment of a worker requires 13 online steps: (1) The Malaysian
employers send demand letters to the Bangladesh Embassy to Kuala Lumpur. (2) After the scrutiny of the
demand letters, the embassy sends these to Bangladesh's ministry of expatriate welfare and overseas
employment. (3) Approved recruiting agencies apply to the ministry for recruitment approval for their
workers. (4) The ministry issues its approval for such workers.

(5) The agencies interview workers and complete their bio-medical tests. (6) After completion of bio-
medical tests, the agencies send documents to Malaysian employers for calling visas. (7) After examining
these, the employers send calling visa to the Malaysian High Commission in Dhaka and the recruiting
agencies concerned. (8) The High Commission provides the seal of validity to the passports.

(9) The Bangladesh ministry provides a three-day training course for the workers. (10) The workers are
given immigration clearance. (11) Agencies purchase tickets and fix the flight schedule for the workers.
(12) See-off at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport and (13) Reception at KL International Airport.

There is a fear of limiting the job of recruiting manpower only by some agencies after creating a syndicate
by the company. Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA), which has been
opposing the appointment of Synerflux, requested the government not to allow the Malaysian company.

BAIRA and Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur did not agree to such arrangement. They fear
of possible cartel and will fully monopolize the job market. The migration cost will surely be high and it will
lead to labor abuses. "It will actually deploy sub-agents in Malaysia to collect job demands and thus the
recruitment system would be monopolized. It may even control the recruiting agents in Bangladesh," a
manpower agent in Dhaka said.

"The Malaysian government will select Bangladesh Recruiting Authorities through online system
supervised by a Malaysian company. The Bangladesh government will not have any control to ensure
whether any recruiting agency will get work or not," reads a December 6 letter from the Bangladesh
mission to the expatriates' welfare ministry in Dhaka. The High Commission wrote to Ministry of
Manpower that such procedure would establish its absolute control over labor recruitment process from
Bangladesh.
The issue of labor recruitment in Malaysia is very important as labor relations between the two countries
have always been marred with corruption and exploitation. Government did not listen to High Commission
in KL and the important stakeholder BAIRA.

By this time, the manipulation of the situation has been surfaced and the new government of Malaysia
also became unhappy with the collusive arrangement. The Malaysia bound Job-seekers are hardly
benefiting from the G2G agreement as recruiters do not obey the government's instruction. The selected
fortunate 10 recruiting agencies are charging around Tk 300,000 to Tk 400,000 each for getting job in
Malaysia although the G2G plus arrangement set Tk 37,000 including air fare (one way) for a worker to
Malaysia.

According to recent news in different media, Malaysian government has stopped the G2G plus process
and initiated an investigation of corruption into it. Unfortunately, Bangladesh government has made no
initiative to resolve the crisis. Any corruption investigation by Bangladesh government is a remote
possibility. Malaysian government will take action against corrupt partners in their country but the
Bangladeshi corrupt partners might be spared by the authority!

Bangladesh is an exporter of professional, skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers to more than 22
countries. Around 400,000 Bangladeshis are legally working in different sectors and around 200,000
workers are illegally working in Malaysia.

Malaysian job market is very important for Bangladesh. Government should immediately contact
Malaysian Government and resume the recruitment as early as possible and bring all manpower
agencies under G2G plus program.

The writer is a legal economist. Email: mssiddiqui2035@gmail.com