The government has identified Poland, Romania, Croatia, Hungary, Bosnia Herzegovina and other East European countries as the potential destinations for Bangladeshi workers, said officials.

Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment ministry officials said that they received many work orders from the East European countries though getting visas emerged as an instant barrier for Bangladeshi workers...

The East European countries offered ample opportunities for Bangladeshi skilled and semi-skilled workers as employersof those countries were interestedto recruit workers for their manual jobs, said officials...

...On February 12, the first ever bilateral consultations with Poland took place in Dhaka where Bangladesh government placed the issues on the discussion table.

...Migrant rights activists said that due to the absence of formal migration, Bangladeshi workers were frequently getting trafficked to the European countries.

Migrant workers were forced to pay a huge amount of money to the human smugglers who often operate in the guise of brokers who were responsible putting the migrants’ life in danger by forcing them to take unconventional routes through sea, jungles and deserts.

The dishonest recruitment agencies charged a ‘huge amount’ of money from workers offering them jobs in Europe, he said, adding that the workers who paid a big amount, were likely to escape workplaces in search of better jobs...