The government has decided to lift ban on immigration clearance for the labour market of Maldives as Bangladeshi migrant workers are getting jobs there.
“A delegation went to Maldives recently and found that our workers are all employed there. Following their report, we have decided to lift ban on immigration clearance soon,” Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) Director General Begum Shamsun Nahar told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
On September 23, following an allegation that the migrant workers are not getting jobs in Maldives, the government temporarily suspended the immigration clearance.
Earlier, while talking to the Dhaka Tribune at his office, Bangladesh Migrant Welfare Society Executive Director Haroon-or-Rashid said a section of unscrupulous recruitment agencies sent workers to Maldives but after a few months they returned home finding no jobs there.
A two-member delegation led by deputy secretary of the Expatriates’ Welfare Ministry Badiur Rahman recently visited the Maldives to look into the problems of the workers.
Badiur Rahman told this correspondent that jobs were available for the Bangladeshi migrant workers in Maldives.
He said the wages in Maldives were low while the migration cost stood high.
A migrant worker has to spend around Tk2,00,000 to go to Maldives while he earns only between Tk12,000 and Tk15,000.
According to the Maldives government, about 80,000 Bangladeshi migrants were working there, but BMET data shows about 28,000 Bangladeshi workers have so far gone to the country since 1976.
Officials said most of the workers went to Maldives without BMET immigration clearance though it was mandatory.
“We asked our migrant workers in Maldives how they reached there. In reply, they said at first the middlemen brought us to airport and then we could easily cross the immigration,” Badiur told the correspondent.
