Bangladeshi labourers in war torn Libya and Iraq were at serious risk, the expatriates' welfare minister, Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, said yesterday. But the government does not plan to evacuate them at this time.
“We have shifted our migrants from Tripoli and Benghazi to safer places in Libya and advised them not to move to conflict-prone areas,” the minister for expatriates' welfare and overseas employment told reporters after a policy discussion on migration and development at a city hotel.
Answering a question, Mosharraf admitted that Bangladeshis were at risk but that it was good news that Bangladeshis were not the target of any of the conflicting groups.
Mosharraf said the government would evacuate Bangladeshi citizens from Libya if the situation deteriorated any further.
Talking to this correspondent, the first secretary of the Bangladesh embassy in Tripoli, Libya, Ahsan Kibria, said 3,500 migrants had been moved from Tripoli and 2,500 from Benghazi to safer places.
He said seven Bangladeshis had been killed in the last few days.
The embassy official said some Korean companies that employed expats had halted their projects in Libya. The companies gave 6 months' leave to workers and said they would recruit further manpower when the situation improved.
The chief of the Dhaka mission of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Sarat Das, told the Dhaka Tribune on the sidelines of the discussion that migrants had little scope of being evacuated at the moment. The IOM has been distributing relief materials in Libya.
Around 50,000 to 60,000 Bangladeshis are on work contracts in Libya.
Asked about the confinement of 180 migrants in Iraq, the expat minister confirmed that it was true and that the migrants had no work.
He said the company that recruited the migrants had no commercial activities.
“We have started negotiations with the company to provide jobs for the migrants elsewhere,” he said.
The expat minister said the managing director of a company recruiting workers to go to Iraq amid war and renewed US airstrikes had assured him that security precautions had been taken.
He said between 25,000 and 30,000 migrants work in Iraq.
Addressing the discussion on migration and development, organised by Parliament and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Speaker of the House Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury said it was necessary to mainstream migration into development.
