By Rahman Jahangir
Dhaka, April 17:
Manpower syndicates in Bangladesh are claiming to “manage visas” in order to attract jobseekers to Libya.
Although there are . . .[restrict]a number of Bangladeshi working in Libya at present, mainly as street cleaners, Libyan employers are in fact not recruiting many workers from Bangladesh at present, officials at the Manpower Ministry in Dhaka said on Monday.
Officials at the Bangladesh Embassy in Tripoli contacted by phone on Monday also said that job brokers claimed to have found jobs for an estimated 10,000 – 15,000 Bangladeshis. However, the embassy had approved only about 1,500 after thorough inspections of the employing companies.
Brokers are said to be attracting significant numbers of Bangladeshi jobseekers and charging $3,000 to $4,500 per job according to some jobseekers who said they hand had already submitted money and passports to recruitment agencies in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.
In the past, manpower syndicates have been accused of being involved in visa trading, sending more than the required number of Bangladeshi workers to Libya. For example, although company required 10 workers the syndicate would claim to have access to 20 visas. The idea, it is claimed, was to make more money by recruiting more workers than necessary.
According to sources, fraudsters are now attempting to send jobseekers to Libya’s neighbours — Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia — on tourist visas and then transport them into Libya.
Anisur Rahman Khan, a Bangladeshi migrants’ rights activist, alleged that some brokers and recruitment agency officials in Dhaka had claimed they could organise visas for Bangladeshis wanting to work in Libya.
Ahsan Kibria, the employment counsellor at the Bangladeshi embassy in Tripoli, said only a few foreign companies employing foreign workers had, in fact, returned to Libya. “Therefore I would check out personally whether employers, who are said to be getting approval for recruiting foreign workers, have the ability to pay wages, provide accommodation and other necessary services,” he said.
Bluestar Services, a Bangladeshi company that had recruited 76 jobseekers to Libya since the revolution, said Libya’s interim government had allowed some foreign companies to recruit workers who had prviously worked in the country. It said that the Libya issued on-arrival visas to these workers, he said.
(This is not quite true. Individuals can get a single-entry visa on arrival at Tripoli or Benghazi airports but only if carrying a printout of a visa already issued by the Libyan authorities.)
The Bangladesh Association of International Recruitment Agencies has requested jobseekers to go to Libya only through licensed recruitment agents, subject to approval by either Bangladesh’s Manpower Bureau or its Expatriates’ Welfare Ministry.
Begum Shamsunnahar, director general at the Bureau of Manpower, said the bureau was not issuing emigration clearances to jobseekers unless their documents had been verified by the Bangladesh embassy in Tripoli. Meanwhile, a task force of the Expatriates’ Welfare Ministry instructed immigration authorities at Dhaka airport to look carefully into every individual case when allowing Libya-bound passengers to leave the country.
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