Redwan Ahmed
A number of 8,34,773 workers went to 165 countries from January to October this year, Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed said yesterday in the parliament. Tofail was proxying Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment minister Nurul Islam BSc, who was absent. Replying to a starred question by MP Nurul Islam Omar from Bogra-6 at the ongoing 18th session of the tenth Parliament, Tofail said “555,800 went abroad In 2015, and 7,57,000 in 2016.”“Bangladesh has signed Memorandum of Understandings to send workers to top labor-markets like Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, South Korea, Jordan and many other countries,” Tofail read out the Nurul Islam’s answer. As a result of various effective diplomatic efforts by the government, the number of expatriate worker in different countries including the Middle East is rapidly increasing. Despite the downturn in the global economy, the government has taken initiatives to explore new labor markets to continue the process of sending workers abroad, Tofail read. In the reply it was also said that the efforts resulted the possibilities to send workers to the new labor markets like Palau, Poland, Sweden, Papua New Guinea, Algeria, South Africa, Congo, Sudan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Russia, Sri Lanka, Andorra, Slovenia, St. Kitts and Nevis.