By: Md Owasim Uddin Bhuyan
New Age Bangladesh | 3 August 2018
A Bangladeshi housekeeper is required to pay $1,800 equivalent to Tk 1. 51 lakh as the cost of migration to Hong Kong, though employers bear the cost of migration.
Recruiting agencies in Bangladesh illegally realize the migration costs for ‘our housemaids’ migrant right activists told New Age.
The recruiting agencies illegally charge $500 as training fee, $ 500as airfare, $ 150 as manpower clearance fee, $ 150 as the scrutiny/selection/ office rent fee, $200 as local service charge and $ 300 as the service charge supposedly payable to recruiting agent in Hong Kong.
Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training director Nurul Islam told New Age that each Hong Kong bound female housekeeper was required to pay $ 1,800 as her migration cost as no employer in Hong Kong bears the cost.
But an agreement signed between the BMET and Hong Kong’s association of recruiting agencies in 2012, requires the employers to bear their full migration costs.