Dhaka ,January 24 (NIA): Around 500,000 to 700,000 Bangladeshi workers will be recruited in different job sectors in Malaysia this year, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam said here on Tuesday.
Recruitment will begin next month, Alam said while talking to journalists after a program at the Senate Building of Dhaka University, The Daily Star reported..
He had visit Malaysia to attend the Extraordinary Session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in Kuala Lumpur on January 19.
Sri Lanka May also Recruit
Even Sri Lanka is likely to recruit Bangladeshis to fill vacancies in the booming construction sector. This sector will soon need thousands of hands both skilled and unskilled as Sri Lanka goes in for the construction of the US$ 40 billion Megapolis project in and around Colombo. The Colombo Port City or Financial City as it is now named, is also to come up .But that will be built mostly with Chinese labor, presumably.
Sri Lanka is also planning an Industrial Park over 15,000 acres in Hambantota and a tourist and industrial complex adjacent to the Trincomalee harbor. These projects too will require skilled and unskilled labor.
Historically Sri Lanka has had a shortage of labor, including soldiers, and has traditionally imported them from India, especially South India.
But the island nation is now against the import of Indian labor fearing that they might settle down here as Indian migrants had done earlier. As Indians and Sri Lankans share the same culture and look alike, intermingling and overstaying are easy. It is believed that Bangladeshi labor will not over stay or settle down in Sri Lanka given the cultural divide.
