Editorial
New rule for individual visa
Retract this move
A government order making attestation of all job documents pertaining to overseas employment by the Bangladeshi missions mandatory has taken effect from February 1. The decision has left us baffled as to how it will facilitate the process of sending job seekers overseas. It will instead put in place unnecessary bureaucratic complexities and may induce corruption in a vital sector. Remittance earning is the second biggest pillar of our economy.
Previously, job seekers going on group visas, which constitute only 10 per cent of the total number, had to go through this process. This is a fairly complex and time-consuming procedure which requires the Bangladeshi embassy in the concerned country to crosscheck the information provided. With the introduction of the new arrangement, now people applying for individual visas will also have to through the same red tape. Sadly enough, it has always been the group visa-holders who are allegedly more frequently defrauded than individual visa-holders.
The expatriates' welfare ministry would have us believe that the move is essential to protect job seekers from fraudulence. While agreeing to the importance of transparency, the question remains: Are the missions prepared to carry this huge load when they have been struggling with the group visas as such? If not, then are we not putting the cart before the horse? We believe that the pitfalls of the missions and the agencies in particular would need to be addressed first before effecting a major shift in terms of reorganizing overseas employment process on a regular footing.
We find the Expatriates' Welfare Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain's remark that he would cancel the move if it was found to stall growth in this sector perplexing. If the minister begins on such a note of uncertainty, in regard to a major move, then how can we be confident of its success? However, the point we would like to make is that unless the missions have been fully prepared to cope with such an oversized load, the decision should be revisited, and if necessary, retracted.
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