We welcome the minister-level meeting between Dhaka and Kuala Lumpur on September 25 that paved the way for all licensed Bangladeshi recruiting agencies to start sending workers to Malaysia. This is good news for our expatriate workers who had previously been in the grip of a syndicate of 10 agents who were charging insane amounts of money from prospective workers keen on entering Malaysia. It is estimated that the racket had raked in around Tk 8,000 crore from the 200,000 expatriate workers. Now that the deal has been inked, it is hoped that recruitment charges will come down significantly.

Although the market has now been opened up, the recruitment process will follow the G2G process (government-to-government). We would like to thank the Malaysian government for taking swift action against the syndicate that had cornered the market and hope that the recruitment cost set by our ministry of expatriates' welfare of Tk 1.6 lakh will be maintained. It is imperative that our authorities are vigilant against any recruiting agency that tries to overcharge workers headed to Malaysia.

We reiterate our position on undocumented workers facing a lot of problems in Malaysia over the issue of regularising their stay in that country and hope the authorities there will take a fresh look at allegations of slow movement on issuing papers that has resulted in incarceration of thousands of Bangladeshi citizens. Now that the market has opened up, it should substantially cut down on illegal emigration of workers, which is good for both countries.