Kuwait is likely to soon start welcoming expert workforce from Bangladesh, diplomatic sources have told the Dhaka Tribune.
The news came as Kuwait’s Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah arrived in Dhaka on a three-day official visit.
A special aircraft carrying the Kuwaiti prime minister and members of his entourage landed at Hazarat Shahjalal International Airport around 5pm yesterday.
Several bilateral deals are expected to be signed during the visit of this high-level delegation to Bangladesh.
Seeking anonymity, a senior official at the Bangladesh Embassy in Kuwait told the Dhaka Tribune that Kuwait is expected to start importing expert workforce from Bangladesh following this visit by the Kuwaiti premier.
Kuwait's job market was closed for Bangladeshis for around seven years until January 2014, when the country started taking in Bangladeshi blue collar workers in agriculture, cleaning and driving sectors.
However, if negotiations go through during the ongoing visit, Kuwait is likely to start inviting professional workforce like doctors and engineers.
According to an unofficial figure, around 200,000 Bangladeshi expatriates are currently living in Kuwait.
Optimism about a positive outcome from the visit was also expressed by the immediate-past Bangladeshi ambassador to Kuwait, Maj Gen (Retd) Mohammad Ashab Uddin.
“I met with Kuwait's prime minister before leaving Kuwait [a few days ago]. I also requested him to take many professionals from Bangladesh besides the labour workforce,” he said.
According to Bangladesh Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training, a total 6,252 Bangladeshis have gone to Kuwait to work as of May 2 this year; for the entire last year the number was 17,472.
Bangladeshi expatriates in Kuwait remitted $254.85m in the first three months of this year; remittance for the entire 2015 was $1,052.55m.
The positive developments come at a time when Kuwait has reportedly stepped up its deportations of expatriate workers this year.
A newspaper in the Gulf emirate reported on Friday that most of the deported were expelled for overstaying their residency permits, but others were sent home for committing traffic offences.
In the first four months of the year, authorities deported 14,400 expatriates, compared to 26,600 for the whole of 2015, Al Anba newspaper reported.
Expatriates make up some 70% of Kuwait’s 4.3 million population.
However, Bangladeshi expatriates living in Kuwait told the Dhaka Tribune over phone that they were not at all affected by these deportations.
Habib Mintu, a Bangladeshi who works as a transport manager in Kuwait's Shuwaikh city, said: “We have not yet heard such news regarding any Bangladeshi that I know.”
But he added that some Bangladeshis who had been living in Kuwait for a long time without residency permit were voluntarily leaving the country.
Labour counsellor of Bangladesh Embassy in Kuwait, Abdul Latif Khan, said: “The Bangladeshi expatriates who already left this country willingly are few in number who have to surrender to the local police to be deported.
“After they surrender, the Kuwait police contact us to make legal documents for them to deport them from Kuwait. Then after we process the documents, those Bangladeshis return to the country,” Latif said.
He also said there were some Bangladeshis living in Kuwait for 25 to 30 years. Many of them had earlier been arrested for living without residency permit or with an expired permit, but had been released to work again after the Bangladesh embassy negotiated with the Kuwait government and arranged new employers.
Another embassy official also told the Dhaka Tribune that everyday the embassy found two to three cases who had voluntarily surrendered to the police to come back to Bangladesh, while there were a couple of cases every month where Bangladeshi expatriates had to be deported for committing an offence.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
