Malaysia prefers workers from Nepal, not Bangladesh

DHAKA - Malaysia is hiring over 100,000 workers from Nepal, “sidelining” 55,000 Bangladeshi workers whose visas were cancelled in March last year, a newspaper has reported.

Malaysia banned foreign workers in manufacturing and service sectors after a report forecast that 45,000 Malaysians were at risk of losing their jobs.

In March the same year the Malaysian government imposed a freeze on hiring 55,000 Bangladeshi workers, citing the global economic meltdown.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, on the sidelines of the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago in November, told his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina that they would maintain the freeze on hiring Bangladeshi workers.

The decision came as a smack for Bangladesh, The Daily Star said Wednesday.

The Malaysian government has already approved around 100,000 visas for Nepali workers. These workers will get entry in six months.

This is far more than the estimated 25,000 visas that Nepal used to get in the past, it quoted Kumud Khanal, co-coordinator of Nepalese manpower agencies, as saying.

This is partly because the Nepalese manpower agencies have brought down the migration cost to around Nepali Rs.40,000 from Rs.80,000 in a bid to send more workers, a recent report of Republica, a Nepalese online newspaper, quoted him as saying.

Bangladesh’s recruiting agencies have expressed grievances over such a decision by Malaysia.

Sidelining 55,000 Bangladeshi workers is inhuman, said Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) president Ghulam Mustafa, adding that the workers who had spent a lot of money for visas have been in trouble for long.

Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Secretary Elias Ahmed, however, said the government was yet to learn about the details of Malaysia’s hiring of workers from Nepal.