1.5 million South Asian workers migrate every year: ILO

1.5 million South Asian workers migrate every year: ILO
Xinhua, 14-Jul-08

More than 1.5 million South Asian workers are estimated to migrate every year, many of them destined for the Gulf region to perform construction, maintenance and other service jobs, said the International Labor Organization (ILO).

For protection of the soaring number of the migrant workers from South Asia, a two-day regional symposium will be held here on July 15-16, private news agency UNB reported Monday quoting ILO sources.

The symposium on "Deployment of Workers Overseas: A Shared Responsibility" will be jointly organized by ILO and the Ministry of Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment of Bangladesh.

The symposium will discuss recruitment policies and cooperation mechanism between origin and destination countries and provide avenue for exchange of best practices on the preparation of workers for foreign employment and provision of on-site services and monitoring.

Representatives of Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea and Sri Lanka will participate in the symposium.

ILO says counting only those who go through regular channels, more than 200,000 workers are estimated every year from each of Sri Lanka and Pakistan and many more from Bangladesh and India.

In 2007, remittances to the region were estimated by the World Bank to have exceeded 40 billion U.S. dollars.

Of this, India accounted for 27 billion U.S. dollars, Bangladesh 6.4 billion dollars, Pakistan 6.1 billion dollars, Sri Lanka 2.7 billion dollars and Nepal
1.6 billion dollars.