‘Incentive still inaccessible for most migrant workers’

Dhaka, Jan 18 – The migrant workers are among the most affected people of Bangladesh due to the ongoing pandemic but got less attention when it came to incentive disbursement. Sectors like the ready-made garments, small and medium enterprises, and agriculture were also wallopped by this pandemic, but the migrant workers got less attention when it came to incentive disbursement.
Although the government formed a Tk700 crore fund for the rehabilitation and re-employment of jobless migrant workers, the dissemination got stuck at the banking level.
Only Probashi Kallyan Bank is assigned for the disbursement now. As the bank does not have enough branches throughout the country, assigning other banks in this process can accelerate the process.
Also, migrants do not have transaction track records that the banks ask for.
So, the introduction of the remittance flow record as transaction track records of the migrants will make their access to incentives easier. This can also lead to an increase in formal transactions.
However, a rise in the remittance flow was seen during the second half of 2020 despite Covid-19. An upward trend was observed despite the predictions of lower flows.
These observations emerged from the online dialogue “Recent remittance inflow: Where so much money is coming from?” organised by the Citizen’s Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh on Sunday.
Professor Mustafizur Rahman, distinguished fellow of Centre for Policy Dialogue, said there were no distinct changes in the sourcing of Bangladesh’s remittances, except for an increase in cash flow.
“So, only a high number of migrant workers are not the reason for high remittance flow. The 2% incentives on remittances declared by the government lowered informal transactions significantly.”
“bKash and other mobile financial services are paying an extra 1% which may have also encouraged larger flows,” Professor Mustafizur said. – UNB