Ensuring fair recruitment is an uphill task for Bangladesh but there is progress in countering the exploitation of migrant workers, the 2025 edition of the Labour Migration in Asia: Fair Recruitment, Training, and Development report notes.
Surveys on recruitment costs based on a standard methodology developed by the ILO and World Bank, show lower costs for some Asian countries of origin, but significantly higher for Bangladesh.
International labour standards provide Bangladesh a good foundation to align its labour migration governance, particularly with the Private Employment Agencies Convention, 1991 (C181), which stipulates that private employment agencies in general should not charge workers any fees or related costs.
The report recommends wide dissemination and enshrinement in law of the ILO General Principles and Operational Guidelines for Fair Recruitment and Definition of Recruitment Fees and Costs (2019) to clarify and enforce the principle that workers should not bear recruitment costs. Narrow exceptions are allowed provided they are in the interest of the worker and the recognised workers' and employers' organizations have been consulted
The report is jointly published by the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Labour Organization (ILO). The 2025 edition tracks and analyses labour migration trends, evaluates recruitment practices, and provides comparative data and policy guidance to help governments and institutions improve labour migration governance.
Promising measures
One of the promising measures highlighted is that the Government of Bangladesh is pursuing is stipulating fees and costs to be paid by employers in bilateral labour migration agreements with destination countries.
"Bangladesh and the Republic of Korea, for example, mutually agreed on fees for language tests, passports, visas, medical examinations, and airfares in their 2018 memorandum of understanding. Transparency in recruitment costs and having clear rules on which of these costs can be charged to workers is important for fair recruitment but it must be accompanied by rigorous implementation," said ILO's Ratna Mathai-Luke, one of the contributors to the report.
The report highlights the challenges faced with respect to fair recruitment in the Bangladesh-Malaysia corridor since 2007, as well as efforts made by the government to put in place a better legal framework as well equip migrant workers with information on decent work and safe migration.
Key reforms
In recent years, the Government of Bangladesh has undertaken several reform measures to counter unfair recruitment practices, including:
- Amendment of the Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Migrants Act, 2013 to include recruitment subagents and intermediaries, enhancing the accountability of private recruitment actors. The Act was endorsed in November 2024.
- Amendment of the Private Recruitment Agents' Code of Conduct Rule 2025 to include sub-agents for greater transparency and accountability.
- Digitization of migration governance through the Recruitment Agents Information System (RAIMS) in 2019, which is now fully active and mandatory with more than 2000 recruiting agencies using it.
- Implementing fair recruitment practices through the ILO Fair Recruitment Initiative, following a highly successful pilot in Qatar's construction sector (2018-2021) that resulted in 92% drop in the average cost of migration for Bangladeshi workers to Qatar's construction sector. About 93% of workers recruited after the pilot reported having no debt.
