MALAYSIA is expected to bring in around 200,000 workers from Bangladesh over the next six months, according to a Bangladeshi government official.
Bangladesh’s local government, rural development and cooperatives junior minister Mir Shahe Alam said the recruitment would be carried out in stages, beginning at the end of September and continuing for six months.
He said the workers would be recruited through companies that have received approval from the Malaysian authorities.
Of the planned intake, about 10,000 workers would be recruited without having to pay recruitment fees, Shahe Alam said.
“Malaysia will hire about 200,000 workers, of whom 10,000 will be hired free of cost,” he was quoted as saying by The Daily Star.
The announcement followed a meeting in Dhaka between Malaysian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Mohd Shuhada Othman and Bangladesh’s local government, rural development and cooperatives Minister Abdul Moyeen Khan.
Shahe Alam said Bangladesh currently had about 800,000 documented workers in Malaysia, in addition to an unknown number of undocumented nationals.
He said the Bangladeshi government had also appealed to Malaysia to provide a mechanism for undocumented Bangladeshi workers to be registered.
The latest development comes after Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman called on Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in June to consider reopening Malaysia’s labour market to Bangladeshi workers.
Malaysia had imposed restrictions on the recruitment of workers from Bangladesh in 2024 following allegations of exploitation involving foreign workers, including forced labour, debt bondage and cases where workers arrived only to discover that the jobs they had been promised were unavailable.
The proposed recruitment exercise comes against the backdrop of Malaysia’s broader efforts to manage its dependence on foreign labour.
Putrajaya has set a target of reducing foreign workers to about 10% of the country’s total workforce by 2030, as outlined under the 13th Malaysia Plan.
The planned intake of Bangladeshi workers therefore comes at a time when Malaysia is attempting to balance labour shortages in key sectors with its longer-term objective of reducing reliance on foreign workers.—Sept 1, 2026
Main image: coveysb.com.my
