Female migration from Bangladesh to other countries continued to decrease significantly mainly due to the lack of workers鈥� language barriers, skills and safety issues.
Female migration continued to decline gradually for the past three years but the total number of labour migrants 鈥� both male and female 鈥� from Bangladesh increased during the period, said the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training statistics.
According to the BMET, female workers鈥� migration from Bangladesh has declined by 42 per cent in the past two years. Of them, 20 per cent declined in 2024 in comparison with the number in 2023 and 28 per cent in 2023 in comparison with the number in 2022.
The government data showed that 105,466 women migrated from Bangladesh in 2022. The number decreased to 76,108 in 2023 and it dropped further to 61,158 in 2024.
The sector insiders said that the migration of Bangladeshi female workers dropped as they failed to compete with the workers from alternative sources like the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India, African countries, and Nepal in terms of working skills for their poor knowledge of languages in the destination countries.
Though the number of female migrants from Bangladesh declined significantly over the years, there was no fact-finding research in this regard.
The recruiting agents, however, said that they had lost interest in sending female workers abroad because of high migration costs and rights activists鈥� allegations of an increasing number of rights violations.
Bangladeshi women mostly migrate as domestic workers and garment sector workers while some migrate as cleaners, tailors, housekeepers, labours, caregivers, and staff of healthcare and other sectors.
The research and policy wing joint secretary for the expatriates鈥� welfare and overseas employment, Ayesha Haq, admitted that the ministry did not have information about the reasons for the declining number of female migrants.
Bangladeshi Ovibashi Mahila Sromik Association general secretary Sheikh Rumana said that the government had failed to control the migration cost over the past couple of years.
鈥楳any women lost interest in migrating from Bangladesh since the migration cost was high. Families want to invest for boys rather than girls,鈥� she said.
She also said that political instability in Bangladesh and other countries also impacted negatively on female labour migration.
Bangladesh Nari Sramik Kendra executive director Sumaiya Islam said that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was the top destination for Bangladeshi women over the years but the country was now hiring female workers from African countries like South Africa and Sudan.
KSA is the top employer of Bangladeshi female workers which employed 5,24,788 female workers since 2004. In percentage, the country alone employed 45 per cent of the total migrated female workers from Bangladesh during the period.
At least 11,62,791 women migrated from Bangladesh to around 90 countries in 20 years between 2004 and 2024. The total number of labour migrants from Bangladesh 鈥� both male and female 鈥� during the period was 1,25,24,298.
Of them, five countries鈥擫ebanon, KSA, Jordan, UAE and Oman鈥� hired over one lakh female workers each.
Migration experts said that Bangladesh saw a boom in female migration in 2017 when the highest 1,21,925 women migrated from Bangladesh. Since then, it was above one lakh until Covid-19 outbreak in 2019.
Rights activists observed that the number of aspirant female migrants was still high but they were not skilled. They suggested the government to review the training module to make it more effective.
Presently, every female worker must have two months of training to secure any overseas job.
Over the past years, a number of destination countries including Oman, Bahrain and Mauritius have suspended hiring workers from Bangladesh while Lebanon and KSA have reduced hiring Bangladeshi female workers significantly.
The BMET additional director general for employment, Mohammad Abdul Hi, said that though they had no research on this, his personal observation was that they could not open new markets.
He said that they were working to ensure skilled training based on global demand.
Labour rights activists urged the authorities to provide training on need-based skills and safety for women in destination countries to boost female migration.