by Naim-Ul-Karim
DHAKA, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- Remittance-reliant Bangladesh witnessed a big boom in overseas employment last year amid growing demand of huge workforce particularly in the Middle East and Asian countries, a senior official said Sunday.
The official of the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), told Xinhua that "1,135,873 Bangladeshis in 2022 found overseas jobs, a rise of more than 84 percent over the same period of the previous year."
Huge demand for mostly blue-collar jobs helped more Bangladeshi job aspirants to find overseas employment last year, said the official who preferred to remain anonymous.
Of the total overseas employment 2022, the official said more than half of Bangladeshi workers found jobs in Saudi Arabia.
According to the BMET statistics, 612,418 Bangladeshi secured jobs in Saudi Arabia, 179,612 in Oman, 101,775 in the United Arab Emirates, 64,383 in Singapore and 50,090 in Malaysia, respectively, in 2022.
The overseas jobs for Bangladeshis in 2021 stood at 617,209.
The BMET official expressed the hope that the soaring trend in overseas employment would continue this year as Bangladesh-based recruiting agencies are getting more appointment letters for workers this year.
Bangladeshi Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Imran Ahmed said recently that many more Bangladeshis would be able to go abroad with overseas employment this year if the current trend continued.
"We're planning to send 15 lakh Bangladeshi workers abroad this year," said the minister, adding the labor market for Bangladeshis is growing.
According to the minister, some 14 million Bangladeshis have currently been living and working in about 162 countries and regions.
The minister said his government has long been trying to send more Bangladeshis abroad alongside protecting the existing destinations.
He said they were working to create more employment opportunities for Bangladeshis in Australia, Thailand and Europe, among others.
"We're also planning to send more workers to Libya this year," Ahmed said.
Officials said the Bangladeshi government has been seeking to send more Bangladeshis abroad to keep undisturbed the inflow of remittances, a major source of foreign currency for the country.
The flow of inward remittances in the first half of the current 2022-23 fiscal year (July 2022-June 2023) rose 2.48 percent to 10,493.25 million U.S. dollars, data from the Bangladesh Bank (BB) showed.
The country's 2021-22 fiscal year (July 2021-June 2022) remittance inflow dipped 15 percent to 21.03 billion dollars.
Officials expected a boom in the inflow of remittances in the near future as a soaring trend in employment in traditional Middle Eastern and Asian countries would likely continue this year.
