Dhaka: The migration cost for Bangladeshi workers is the highest in the world that eats up a bulk part of the remittance sent by its expatriates, said Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) executive director Mustafizur Rahman here on Saturday.

‘Bangladeshi workers need to spend huge on going abroad… in many cases, they have to repay double against the loans taken to meet their migration costs,’ he told a roundtable discussion.

Debate for Democracy, an association of debaters arranged the roundtable titled ‘Budget and Labour Migration’ at Spectra Convention Centre at Gulshan.

Mustafizur Rahman said if Bangladesh wants to find out the net income from the labour migration sector, it has to calculate what amount Bangladesh workers spent on migration.

‘The net income of Bangladesh workers is yet to be enough for sustainable livelihood of their families,’ he said.

Now the migration cost reduction is not a target of only Bangladesh, it has also turned to be a global agenda as the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) focused on safe migration, he mentioned.

Noting that the government has also taken a number of steps to reduce the migration cost, Mustafizur Rahman said the steps need to be widened further.

The CPD executive director stressed the need for diversifying labour markets and trades, and taking proper training programmes in line with the latest demand of the job markets.

Addressing the event, Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) director (training) Nurul Islam said the BMET has taken an initiative to conduct a study on job market demand in 50 countries.

The BMET will appoint a consultancy firm to carry out the comprehensive study to find out the latest demands in the 50 job markets, he added.

About the standard of the country’s manpower training programmes, he said, ‘We’re now facing a challenge to achieve international standard. We have yet to get a mutual recognition.’

The BMET Director, however, said the Finance Minister made a block allocation of Tk 100 crore for human resource development fund in the budget, which is largely for oversees employment. ‘It’s a big approach as there’ll be no fund crisis for training programmes,’ he added.

Observing that Bangladesh exported some 5.55 lakh workers last year, he said the figure will go up to 7 lakh this year.

If the remittance that comes through illegal channels is counted, the amount of total remittance will go up to US$ 18 billion, he said.

Voicing frustration, Nurul Islam said Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) has never conducted any study on job market demand.

He said though Bangladesh export manpower to 161 countries now, the number of Bangladeshi workers is very low in many countries.

Debate for Democracy chairman Hasan Ahmed Kiron in his keynote paper said though the migration sector is the biggest source of foreign currency, the allocation for the sector is only 0.16 percent of the national budget.

As per BGMEA statistics, the export earning of the readymade garment sector was US$ 25 billion in 2015. But the net earning was only US$ 13 billion (if costs of cotton and other raw materials are excluded), whereas the Bangladesh expatriates sent more than US$ 15 billion, he said.

Noting that the migration sector is neglected in the budget, Kiron said the budgetary allocation for the Expatriates’ Welfare and Oversees Employment Ministry is Tk 560 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal, which is only 0.16 percent of the national budget.

He mentioned the migration sector is now facing a number of challenges, including failure to create new labour markets, lack of skilled workers and designing modern training programmes.

Debate for Democracy director SM Morshed delivered the welcome speech.