Keep manpower export out of lockdown: Recruiters

A group of recruiters have called for keeping the manpower export sector out of the purview of the nationwide weeklong fresh lockdown starting on Monday. 

Recruiting Agency Oikya Parishad, an association of private recruiting agencies, wrote to Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Imran Ahmad in this regard on Saturday. 

Its President M Tipu Sultan said the future of migrants who had obtained visas and those spending their vacation here would become uncertain if the manpower sector remained closed during the lockdown.

More than Tk150 crore have been paid for non-refundable tickets and quarantine hotel bookings in destination countries for thousands of migrants, he said. 

He requested operating international flights for as long as destination countries would recruit migrants amid the pandemic.

Recruiting Agency Oikya Parishad said in the letter the novel coronavirus had already cost the recruiting agencies hundreds of crores of taka. 

It said it is very important to keep the sector out of the purview of the lockdown by declaring it an emergency service sector. 

Around 21,000 Bangladeshi migrants faced uncertainty after the government had cancelled all international flights since 14 April amid the strict Covid-19 lockdown. 

Later, the authorities decided to operate special flights for migrants bound for five countries.

Overseas employment of Bangladeshi migrants began to return to normalcy in the first three months of this year amid the pandemic.

Migrants showed interest in going to the Middle Eastern countries, with around 1.46 lakh leaving the country from January to March for jobs, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET).

But the fresh lockdown imposed early in April this year disrupted the normalisation of manpower export.

Total overseas employment was 14,000 in May and 34,000 in April, according to the BMET.