Bangladesh's overseas job recruitment, a key revenue earner for the poor country, fell nearly 39 percent in February versus the same month in 2009, its worst fall in five years, a senior official said Tuesday. Slightly more than 27,000 Bangladeshis secured jobs abroad in February compared with about 44,000 in the year-ago period. "It is a disaster for the sector," said a senior official of the state-run Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training.
According to official statistics, there was no growth in February overseas employment in the country's prime job destinations - the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Singapore. He told reporters that those countries had accounted for 80 percent of Bangladesh's overseas employment.
Remittances from more than 6 million expatriates hit $9.7 billion in the fiscal year ending last June, 22.3 percent higher than the previous year, despite the global economic slump that put jobs at risk. Millions of Bangladeshis are dependent on money sent by relatives working overseas, mainly in the Middle East, Europe and the United States.