Labor Minister Adel Fakeih (right) receives visiting Bangladesh Minister for Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Khandker Mosharraf Hossain and his delegation in Riyadh last week.

The Ministry of Labor will soon overturn a two-year-old ban on the recruitment of Bangladeshi manpower, and will allow private companies to hire nationals from that country, Al-Riyadh daily has reported, quoting sources close to the ministry.

This measure comes after a visit to Saudi Arabia last week by Bangladeshi Labor Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, who announced his country’s completion of all recruitment requirements set by the Saudi Ministry of Labor in this regard, sources said.

India’s insistence on imposing more terms and conditions on Saudi businessmen to recruit Indian workers, including raising minimum wages to SR1,500, has hindered labor agreements with the Kingdom.

During their recent talks, the Bangladeshi minister and Saudi Labor Minister Adel Fakeih talked about the development of the recruitment system in the Kingdom. As part of the joint efforts, both sides stated that Bangladeshi workers would have certain levels of skills, labor culture and knowledge of labor laws prevailing in the Kingdom, the paper said.

According to the Bangladeshi official, his country has set up a center for manpower. The center will streamline the recruitment process with Saudi Arabia, and has a database with nearly 2.2 million workers, which is currently used to send manpower to other countries such as Malaysia, South Korea and Hong Kong, Hossain said.

[wpResize]