Staff Reporter :
A total of 289 expatriate Bangladeshi workers returned home from Oman while 164 more Bangladeshi nationals, who have been stranded in South India amid flight suspension due to COVID-19 pandemic, arrived here on Thursday by separate chartered flights.
A special flight of Oman Air landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA) at 6:21 PM on Thursday evening carrying 289 Bangladeshi citizens, HISA director Group Captain AHM Touhid-ul Ahsan told media.
Oman bore the cost of the flight to send back the second batch of Bangladeshi nationals as 288 expatriate workers first arrived here on April 24 from the Middle Eastern (ME) nation that took decongestion policy leveling migrant workers as like some of its neighboring countries fearing rise of the pandemic.
Saudi Arabia was the first ME country that sent more than 200 expatiate labourers on April 15 after outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic that forced to job cut of migrant workers employed in the oil-rich nation.
As per the government decision, after arriving here, all returnee workers would have undergone a medical checkup at the airport and to be sent to a 14-day institutional quarantine under the Armed Forces Division (AFD) management.
The returnee expatriate workers received Taka 5,000 on arrival at the airport according to a government decision, taken early this month.
