A recipe for more migration fraud?

Migrant workers remitted a record $33 billion last year, a vital cushion for a nation navigating political turbulence. Yet the machinery that sends them abroad remains largely broken, with prohibitive costs and middlemen who treat human beings as commodities. Against this backdrop, the interim government’s decision to approve 252 new overseas recruiting agencies is baffling. This expansion pushes the total number of licensed recruiters to 2,646—the highest in South Asia—dwarfing India’s 1,988 and Pakistan’s 2,537. Clearly, it flies in the face of economic logic and expert advice as, just months ago, a government-commissioned white paper explicitly recommended a “reasonable” reduction in agencies to curb endemic fraud. To our surprise, the expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment ministry has done the opposite.

A senior secretary has reportedly argued that more agencies will break the stranglehold of powerful syndicates, and that even if each new firm sends just one worker, numbers will rise. This is based on a rosy assumption that more competition automatically leads to better behaviour. In reality, it merely fuels a race to the bottom: illicit costs permeate every layer of the labour market and ultimately trickle down to aspiring migrants, forcing them to pay a higher price than anyone else in the region.

The white paper’s findings were quite damning. Over the past decade, it revealed, nearly one in five workers who paid advances failed to migrate at all, resulting in annual losses of roughly Tk 31,660 crore. That is why we stress that the system needs cleaning, not cluttering. The priority should be a rigorous audit to weed out unfit agencies, not the issuance of fresh licences that will stretch an already overstretched regulator to breaking point. The Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) is drowning in complaints, with over 2,200 last year alone. Having to police more agencies would be almost impossible.

This decision comes as the global market for Bangladeshi labour is shrinking. Malaysia halted recruitment amid corruption allegations during the tenure of the Awami League government. The UAE has suspended visas, and traditional markets like Oman and Bahrain are largely closed. Even Saudi Arabia, the destination for 70 percent of migrants, is becoming less hospitable, with rising costs and fewer jobs. When legal routes narrow, the temptation for irregular migration grows. Already, Bangladeshis topped the list of irregular sea crossings to Europe last year.

The interim government has a mandate to dismantle prevailing syndicates, yet it appears to be replicating the mistakes of the past. Issuing licences is easy; ensuring that a village labourer is not bankrupted by a predatory broker is hard. The government seems to have chosen the easy part. But our migrant workers deserve better. 

Going forward, we urge the authorities to enforce strict legal and ethical standards and negotiate bilateral agreements that eliminate middlemen altogether. Agencies with proven records of fraud must be stripped of their licences, and this clean-up must be paired with strengthening the BMET. Establishing a centralised, digital payment gateway for migration fees would also be a critical step in eliminating opaque cash transactions that fuel the syndicate system and drive up costs for the poorest workers.