Bangladesh and Japan today signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) on accepting specified skilled workers by Japan from Bangladesh.

The document was signed by the Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry of Bangladesh with the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Policy Agency of Japan at Immigration Service Agency, Ministry of Justice in Tokyo.

Rownaq Jahan, Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment secretary, and the Commissioner of the Immigration Services Agency Shoko Sasaki signed in the MoC on behalf of their respective countries.

Rabab Fatima, Ambassador of Bangladesh in Japan; Yasuaki Imai, Director of the Office of International Affairs, Policy Planning Division; Md Jahangir Alam, Joint Secretary; Counsellor (Labour) of Bangladesh Embassy in Tokyo and other high officials of the two countries were present during the signing ceremony.

Rownaq Jahan said the MoC will create opportunity to send specified skilled workers from Bangladesh to Japan under certain terms and conditions and both the countries will be mutually benefitted.

Japanese language proficiency test and skills proficiency test are the basic requirements to be selected as 'Specified Skilled Workers' who will be recruited in 14 fields/sectors into two categories within the next five years.

The 14 fields/sectors include care worker, building cleaning management, machine parts & tooling industries, industrial machinery industries, electric, electronics and information industries, construction industry, shipbuilding/ship machinery industry, automobile maintenance, aviation industry, accommodation industry, agriculture, fishery & aquaculture, manufacture of food and beverages, Food service industry.

Foreign nationals who have completed technical intern training (level-2) are exempted from taking exams and a good number of SSW will be recruited from them.

The specified skilled workers' (category-I) contract can be renewed for five years if they pass a Japanese language test and have a certain skill level in their designated field. But in principle they are not allowed to bring their families to Japan.

On the other side, the specified skilled workers (category-II) can be renewed indefinitely once they are employed with higher skill levels than specified skilled workers (category-I) holders and are permitted to bring their spouses and children along.

Rownaq Jahan informed that the government is taking various initiatives to match the abundance of skilled workforce with Japan's demand for manpower.

The Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry started to teach four-month long Japanese language course through its 26 technical training centres all over the country since February 2018.

Besides, many private organisations are taking initiatives to teach Japanese language course.