ASEAN Beat | Diplomacy | Southeast Asia

Bangladeshi PM Tarique Rahman Asks Malaysia to Lift Restrictions on Labor Migration

Kuala Lumpur has recently tightened the intake of Bangladeshi workers due to concerns about abuse, debt bondage, and excessive recruitment fees.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (right) and Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman speak at a joint press conference in Putrajaya, Malaysia, Jun. 22, 2026.

Bangladesh’s new prime minister has asked Malaysia to consider reopening its labor market to Bangladeshi migrant workers, as he and his Malaysian counterpart pledged a broad expansion of economic relations.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman made the request to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim during a meeting in Putrajaya yesterday. The visit, Tarique’s first since taking office in February, is intended to drum up investment and economic support, and will also involve a three-day state visit to China.

During a joint press conference, Tarique said he had asked Anwar to consider reopening the labor market to Bangladeshi workers as soon as possible, while also raising issues related to undocumented workers and the possible repatriation of detained Bangladeshis.

“We agree that recruitment should be transparent, fair, and affordable, reducing the role of intermediaries and lowering the cost of overseas employment,” he said, the South China Morning Post reported.

Bangladesh was for years a major source of migrant labor for Malaysia, and relies heavily on the remittances from overseas workers, which totaled more than $27 billion in 2024. But migrant worker advocates say that the industry has long been rife with practices such as debt bondage, forced labor, excessive recruitment fees, and scams that have seen workers stranded penniless in Malaysia.

This has prompted Malaysia to restrict the intake of Bangladesh workers on a number of occasions in the past. The most recent of these was in 2024, when after experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council highlighted the poor treatment of Bangladeshi workers.

The U.N. experts found numerous cases of workers who were left stranded over scams that promised jobs that were later found to be non-existent, and called on Malaysia “to take urgent measures to address the dire humanitarian situation of migrants and........

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