Female migrant workers from Chattogram on the decline

The number of overseas female workers from Chattogram is on the decline, and the figure has been further reduced by the pandemic.

In the last couple of years, Chattogram was ahead of other districts in sending workers abroad — especially to the Middle East — but in the last two years, this has been on a downward trend.

According to the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), 174 women left Chattogram district for jobs overseas this year. From Cumilla, the number of women leaving for jobs abroad was 462 and 763 from Brahmanbaria.

In 2019, a total of 34,756 workers migrated overseas from Chattogram for employment abroad, of whom only 806 were female workers. The figure was 65,942 from Cumilla (806 women) and 41,234 from Brahmanbaria (4,099 women).

M Zahirul Alam Majumder, deputy director of the District Employment and Manpower Office, said rumours and lack of information has led to the gradual decrease in number of female migrant workers out of Chattogram.

“Chattogram is a conservative area and local women are barely interested to go abroad for their livelihoods,” Zahirul said, adding that the cultural barrier is also a factor in choosing a country to migrate to.

“BMET has already started an awareness campaign,” he informed.

He also noted that preference of country to migrate to is another big factor; people from Chattogram are mostly interested to go to Middle Eastern countries only.

Bangladesh sends workers to almost 165 countries including Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, UAE, Italy, Indonesia and Singapore.

According to the BMET website, overseas employment from Bangladesh in 2020 was 181,218 till May, of which 18,813 were female workers.

In 2019 the total overseas employment was 700,159 and among them, 104,786 were female workers.

Between 1991 and 2019, overseas employment from Bangladesh was over 902,481; some 341,020 workers migrated to Saudi Arabia and 130,911 to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Shamsul Alam, additional secretary and director general of BMET, said that this year, their target was to send 10 lakh workers abroad but the pandemic made only left room for 2 lakh migrants.

“We are hoping Malaysia will open its labour market for Bangladesh next year and we will able to meet the target then,” he added.