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There are about 13,000 restaurants in different European countries which are being owned and operated by Bangladeshis. These restaurants generate about one thousands jobs annually which can be filled by workers or employees from Bangladesh. Each such employee going to an European country with a job can expect to earn between taka 80,000 and taka 1,00,000 per month. Thus, restaurant jobs in greater number can yield huge amounts of foreign currency in remittances for Bangladesh.
It could be learnt that the earnings of restaurant owners of Bangladeshi origin in the UK alone are about taka 30 thousand crore annually and they provide about taka 6,000 crore in revenues to the UK government. But the Bangladeshi restaurant operators in the UK are suffering from a crisis of not having the requisite number of employees to maintain or expand their businesses. The British government has even relaxed its rules to enable more workers from Bangladesh to go to that country to work in restaurants out of a concern that this should help the revenue earnings for the government of that country.
But the main difficulty in sending more workers from Bangladesh for restaurant jobs in the European countries is the lack of facilities for them in the country for proper training. European countries are very keen to maintain standard in their establishments including restaurants. Thus, in order to exploit this opportunity, what is needed is the establishment of catering institutions of international standard in the country for training purposes. Both the government and the private sector can build such institutes in Bangladesh and investments to that end should prove to be profitable for them.
Besides, there are also opportunities to export kitchen items from Bangladesh for use in the Bangladeshi restaurants of European countries. These opportunities should be also explored with more enthusiasm than hitherto in order to create new export avenues.
Hussain Murshed
Nakhalpara, Tejgaon,
Dhaka.
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