Bangladesh sends first batch of skilled personnel to Uzbekistan

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Bangladesh sent manpower to Uzbekistan today for the first-time.

The first batch of 239 Bangladeshi staff flew to the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan aboard a particular aircraft of Uzbekistan Air at 10:30am from Hazrat Shahjalal AIRPORT TERMINAL (HSIA), Director of the airport, Group Captain AHM Touhid-ul Ahsan, told The Daily Star.

Bangladesh's Ambassador to Uzbekistan Jahangir Alam said a complete of 888 employees would go to the country on three special flights in a row -- through four recruiting agencies -- in the process of exporting skilled workers from Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi workers will work for an engineering company in Karshi, about 450 km from Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan.

Overseas labour market authorities start to see the new development for these skilled labour exports to Uzbekistan positively.

Experts in the manpower sector said it is very important for Bangladesh to find new labour markets as the demand for foreign employees in the Gulf countries has been around decline because of various reasons including malpractices in the recruitment process.

Over the last few years, thousands of Bangladeshi employees have returned from different countries, especially from the Gulf.

Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Imran Ahmad has said the federal government is taking initiatives to send employees to at least six new destinations.

Sources at the ministry said the federal government is looking for alternative job markets abroad as job opportunities in traditional markets drastically shrank recently.

In this context, the federal government in the beginning set a target to send manpower to six countries -- Cambodia, Poland, China, Romania, Croatia and the Seychelles.

Besides, the government can be looking at exporting manpower to different central Asian countries.