Bangladesh – Unemployment Nightmare!
By Habib Siddiqui
The other day I was talking with Raju, an unemployed Bangladeshi with a graduate degree in Pharmacy. After graduating from a private university, he briefly worked as a lecturer for a college. Although he was teaching three days in a week he was required to be present there every weekday. The salary was low but hours he had to spend at the college were long, not counting, of course, the awful commuting hours. So, he volunteered to leave his job. I can’t blame him for his decision.
The other day I was talking with Raju, an unemployed Bangladeshi with a graduate degree in Pharmacy. After graduating from a private university, he briefly worked as a lecturer for a college. Although he was teaching three days in a week he was required to be present there every weekday. The salary was low but hours he had to spend at the college were long, not counting, of course, the awful commuting hours. So, he volunteered to leave his job. I can’t blame him for his decision.
I am told that on an average approximately 1.7 million hours
are lost every day by commuters to and from work in Chittagong, the second
largest city in Bangladesh. With a population of nearly 8 million people and
with horrendous gridlocks on all the major arteries in the city, moving from
one part to another part of the city is very time-consuming. The situation is
worse in Dhaka, the capital city, where on an average nearly 3.2 million hours
are lost every day by commuters. The average commuter speed has reduced from 21
to 7 kilometers per hour in the last ten years, which is only a couple of
kilometers higher than the walking speed of an adult. The Dhaka metropolitan
area is forecasted to have an estimated 30 million people living by the next
decade. Unless a well-thought out program is planned and meticulously
implemented for expanding the major cities like Dhaka with appropriate
infrastructure development it would be a nightmare for the residents commuting
between places.
Environmental regulations for clean air and water are flawed
allowing release of toxic gases from tailpipes of buses, trucks and taxis. No
wonder that in recent years the numbers of patients suffering from respiratory
problems have skyrocketed. Even people who have never smoked cigarette are now
diagnosed with lung cancer. The quality of municipal water is very poor,
thereby causing many to suffer from water-borne diseases. Most people now,
therefore. must either buy bottled water or have the municipal water boiled and
filtered multiple times.
When I asked Raju if he had been applying for jobs, he
answered in the affirmative but said that there is so much competition for jobs
that it is very difficult to land a job without bribing hiring officials.
Almost all jobs now require a massive application fee, which runs into
thousands of Taka (1 US dollar is approx..80 Taka). For a government job he had
applied, there were 60,000 applicants, of which only 98 passed the test and
were asked to appear for their interview. He is one of those who passed the
written test. However, since only six persons would be hired he sees no chance
of getting the job unless a hefty bribe is paid on his behalf. Naturally, I was
surprised to hear the depth of corruption in the government employment sector.
Compounding the problem is a very controversial quota system in which nearly
one-third of job quota is fixed for family members of freedom-fighters who had
participated in Bangladesh’s liberation war. A sixth of the job quota is fixed
for minorities, physically handicapped individuals, etc., thus, effectively
limiting the opportunity for an ordinary applicant – who form most applicants -
to the remainder 50% of the positions.
In recent weeks this highly discriminatory quota system has
seen much demonstrations and protest marches in many parts of the country
forcing the Prime Minister to say that she would prefer its abolishment.
However, members of the ruling party and its student affiliates have been major
beneficiaries of the quota system, and they are opposed to any change, and have
often beaten up peaceful demonstrators demanding a change of the quota system.
Raju told me that every aspirant for the job was required to
pay Tk. 1500 (approx..20 USD). A quick math reveals that approx..1.2 million
USD was collected by the hiring organization from the applicants. Since only
six persons would be hired, the government agency has collected approx.$200,000
per person that would be hired. This is a phenomenal figure given that the
hired employee would be making less than a thousand dollar a month. The hiring
agency has essentially collected salary worth 200 months or 16 plus years from
the job applicants. This practice is very common within the private sector,
esp. the banking or finance sector, where seemingly the hiring company can make
a dividend from posting jobs.
I am told that with some 19.6 million adults unemployed,
Bangladesh has a phenomenal 48% unemployment rate within the educated group
with college and university degrees. This explains how a hiring company can
make tons of money by posting an ad in the newspaper. The salary offered to
these newly graduates is rather pitiful. The other day, I was speaking with a
woman whose daughter had returned from India after completing a 4-year cost
management bachelor’s degree program from a prestigious institute. Her daughter
was offered a salary of only Tk. 3500 per month (approx. 40 USD) by a private
company. This is painful to most parents when they see that their children are offered
such a low-paying job in the private sector while they had spent more than a
quarter million taka for their college/university education. Even the uneducated
cleaning ladies and house servants make more money than these educated new
hires!
[Source: Keystone BSC, Table II: Unemployment in South Asia. Source:
EIU, 2014. Graduate unemployment in Bangladesh]
As I hinted above, bribery is a major deciding factor in most
job hiring. Raju relayed to me his own experience for a job within the government
industrial sector. He was one of the few who had passed the written test and
was asked to appear for the interview session. Knowing that without
recommendation from well-connected government officials or bribes he had no
chance, he approached an ex-Minister. The ex-Minister told him that Raju had to pay him Tk. 800,000 for him to
recommend Raju. Raju did not but one of his friends paid the
said amount to the ex-Minister, and got the job. I heard similar reports from many
job applicants, which shows the depth of corruption that has penetrated rather
deep inside Bangladesh.
Interestingly, the ex-minister is the leader of a communist party. In olden days, people in Bangladesh would entertain very
positive impression about the sincerity and honesty of communist minded party
members and leaders. It did not take too long, however, to find out that they
are worse than non-communists. So, Raju’s experience with the ex-Minister did not
surprise me.
These days the people in Bangladesh are not fooled
by these greedy and immoral communists when they saw firsthand how corrupt they
were. As a result, the only reason people like the ex-Minister were chosen to serve
as ministers was because of being part of a coalition government with the major
ruling party as a minority coalition member; on their own, they could not win a
single electoral seat in the parliament. These fake communists have failed to
live by the dictates of communism and have made a mockery of the once much
popular ideology in much of the third world countries, which explains why
outside China and Cuba communism is a stinking carcass.
Comments
Post a Comment