National Desk: Every country in the world is trying its best to control the global epidemic Corona. The government of Bangladesh has been taking various steps at different times since the beginning of the transition. No country in the world has been able to acquire a thorough knowledge of coronavirus infection, the spread of infection and the death caused by the infection. Despite this, the Bangladesh government is making maximum efforts to prevent the spread of the virus within its limited capacity. Government, semi-government and non-government organizations have announced closure in the process of taking various timely steps starting from lockdown. As a result, in addition to controlling infections, the unemployment rate has risen sharply. In the last sixteen months or so, a large number of upper classes have descended into the middle class, and the middle class has descended into the lower class. Foreign remittances have kept the country’s economy fresh even in times of extreme financial and professional crisis for almost every person in Bangladesh. In the last fifty years since independence, the country has gone from being a poverty benchmark to a booming bull in South Asia, largely on remittances sent by migrant workers. Last month, Nicholas Christoph, a well-known columnist for the New York Times, advised US President Joe Biden to learn from Bangladesh what should be done to reduce poverty. The U.S. economy is in recession because of Covid. Poverty is on the rise, hunger and malnutrition are on the rise. The worst affected are women and children. Christoph writes, Bangladesh once had all these problems. See how the country has come out of that crisis. “A catastrophic storm in 1991 killed nearly a million people,” he wrote. The unprecedented progress of the last three decades proved that day I wrote wrong. Bangladesh has made enviable economic progress in the past. As we know, the biggest driving force of our development is foreign remittances. Most of which comes from the hard work of our expatriate labor brothers from the Middle East. When foreign remittances earned through export of goods are under threat, the country’s economy survives on remittances from manpower exports. Last year, the World Bank estimated that Bangladesh could earn 14 billion US dollars from foreign remittances, but to everyone’s surprise, Bangladesh earned 21.73 billion US dollars. This strong foundation of Bangladesh’s economy is the sapphire of the expatriate workers. How much we respect expatriate workers and how much we value those involved in the manpower export trade is questionable and a matter of different discussion. I will only focus on one issue of manpower exporters today. Suppose a manpower exporter exports manpower to Middle Eastern countries at an average cost of Rs 1.5 lakh per visa purchase. This visa is valid for three months. It takes two to two and a half months to come to this country after the visa process i.e. visa printing then verification of the validity of the visa from the Bangladesh High Commission located in that country. When the visa arrives, it takes another fifteen to twenty days for the workers to raise money. Then there is a total of ten to fifteen days. In other words, the worker has to fly from Bangladesh within these fifteen days. Apart from giving fingerprints and medical check-ups before flying from Bangladesh, there are several other important tasks. In a word, these special and important tasks are called manpower. The Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) has done all the work related to manpower and making separate smart cards for the workers. If this BMET is closed due to lockdown, then the export of labor is directly hampered. Because during these last ten to fifteen days, the workers went abroad to join the work with the clearance from BMET. And if the clearance from BMET is not obtained within this period, then the visa expires, i.e. the purchase of the visa is a complete loss of money. Suppose a manpower exporter is able to purchase 300 visas by trying all year round. If the cost of each visa purchase is Tk. 1.5 lakh, the total cost is Tk. 4.5 crore. Now if BMET is closed for Corona, a trader will face a loss of at least four and a half crore taka. It is not possible for a manpower exporter to bear the burden of this huge loss. As a result, the unintended loss will ultimately fall on the marginal workers who raised money by selling their land or cows and goats to go abroad. Some of them may have collected money in exchange for going abroad. According to our estimates, about two lakh workers are not able to go abroad even after getting visas due to the closure of BMET. The financial calculations of two lakh workers show that the loss of the state is at least three thousand crore taka. The Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) needs to be reopened soon considering this huge amount of direct financial loss and potential remittances from the state. Keeping the BMET running is no less important in keeping the wheel of the economy running, like hospitals providing emergency services. BMET is like a visa hospital.
Writer : Abu Raihan Sarkar,
Executive Director,
Bangladesh Tourism Research and Training Institute (BTRI)
