Staff Reporter :
About 30 Bangladeshi nationals evacuated from the Mediterranean Sea returned home on Thursday.
Officials at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport said that they arrived by a flight of Turkish Airlines at 12:00 noon.
Among the returnees, seven persons were from Shariatpur, six from Madaripur, four of Gopalgonj, three from Tangail and two each from Faridpur, Sylhet and Kishorgonj and one each from Dhaka, Munshiganj, Noakhali and Cumilla.
The returnees said they reached Dubai of the United Arab Emirates in the beginning of this year with visit visa firstly.
Then they managed to arrive in Tunisia through Libya aiming to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Italy. When they tried to cross the sea, they had been evacuated and sent back home.
Earlier on August 19, about 13 persons were sent back to Bangladesh while on July 1, about 17 and on March 24, about seven returned after being evacuated from the sea while crossing the sea towards Europe.
Besides, a number of more Bangladeshi people evacuated from the sea are waiting to return home.
Officials at BRAC migration programmes said that the trend of going to Europe through such dangerous journey is growing among Bangladeshi people in recent years.
They said about 5,300 Bangladeshi people went Europe from January to August this year.
Besides, about 65,000 Bangladeshi migrants entered Europe in the last 12 years. About 40,000 of them have reached there crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
Most of them are from 25 to 40 years of age, the BRAC data showed.
Meanwhile, the European Union is creating pressure on the Bangladesh government to take back its citizens from there as they feel burden of migration seekers.
Earlier on 2017, the EU had created similar pressure upon the government on the matter.
The EU officials proposed to impose temporary restrictions on issuing visa to Bangladeshi citizens as the government delayed to take any measures on returning those undocumented migrants.
However, Bangladesh has inked a memorandum of understanding with the EU in this regard.
