Mauritius is turning to Bangladesh for recruitment

Mauritius is turning more and more to Bangladesh for recruitment of foreign workers and, to facilitate their entry, Labour minister Shakeel Mohamed is flying soon to Dhaka to sign an agreement.

“It is important to go for such an exercise but the exact day is not fixed yet,” said the minister to The Independent.

He was in Bangladesh early this month to remit compensation to the families of the St Julien accident victims. During his stay, he had high level talks on facilitating the recruitment of Bangladeshi workers.

The minister is reported to have expressed his wish to recruit more male workers because the ratio of men to women is one to ten. It is estimated that at present 10,000 Bangladeshis are working in Mauritius and 9, 000 of them are women.

To facilitate their entry Dhaka has reduced visa attestation fee for Mauritius, bringing down the manpower export cost. There are press reports that Bangladeshi expatriate welfare and overseas employment ministry has notified their foreign ministry that visa fee for Mauritius has been reduced to $5 from $60.

They are also trying to bring down the overall expenditure to as low as Rs 12,000 from Rs 80,000.

“The Mauritius government wants Bangladesh state-agency BOESL to recruit people on behalf its employers to avoid any cheating in manpower recruitment,” a Bangladeshi official is reported to have told the press.

The BOESL provision is likely to be incorporated in the memorandum of understanding on manpower export to be signed between the governments in April.