12/01/2021
Migration News Wage Earners Contribution to Rural Development of Bangladesh
services, investment services, insurance, remittance transfer
and various payment services.
It is still remain a challenge to updates the migrants and
families on authentic channel, process of remittance transfer
and pros and cons of digital transactions. Information
dissemination and providing counseling services for migrants
on appropriate use of remittances and foreign earnings are
limited at rural level. However, migrants rarely dispatches with
referral support services of existing government institutions,
regarding their financial investment, credit and savings.
Therefore, the government with its lowest tier institutional setup
called Union Digital Information Center (UDIC), followed by
district level setup like: DEMOand TTC, could act as Resource
Center and provide services including: counseling for
remittance investment, provide referral and linkage support
services (with PKB, other scheduled banks/FIs, MFIs,
Cooperatives, WEWB etc.) and providing reintegration training.
While return after the successful completion of service tenure,
the migrants who are enriched with skills, experience,
knowledge, and networks could become a potential resource
for the home country. Therefore, the country could recognize
these returnees’ experiences and skills by certifying them with
RPL (Recognizing Prior Learning) and employ them at different
public-private owned infrastructure development projects.
However, for maximizing the benefits from producers to
retailers, the government institutions required to facilitate the
process of engagement of migrant investors in every tier of
value chain of the respected enterprises. As majority of
remittance recipients are female at rural areas, it should be a
key concern to empower women through capacity building on
remittance and income management, enterprise development,
and bargaining skill development.
For promoting and facilitating migrants and diaspora
remittance earning investment in business and trade, the
government needs to organize market place events or
business fair, offer incentives for development of cooperative
based local enterprises, offer share to invest in public-private
shared industries i.e. manufacturing, construction, shipping,
pharmaceutical, health care/ hospital, food processing etc.
Meanwhile, the Wage Earners Welfare Board should stepped
forward formulating synergic strategies with SME foundation to
keep provision for migrants and diaspora investment and own
business share.
However, to encourage migrant workers invest in contributory
provident fund from which they will get annual incentive
benefits, the WEWB could leap forward to manage such
provident fund, and incite migrants to invest in wage earners
welfare bond. Apart from this, it is essential to allocate
emergency and special social security funds for vulnerable and
distressed migrants and families from government exchequer.
https://migrationnewsbd.com/news/view/32315/54/Wage-Earners-Contribution-to-Rural-Development-of-Bangladesh
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