Another 51 Bangladeshi nationals returned to Dhaka from the trouble-torn Iraqi capital Baghdad on Tuesday.They arrived at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport by a Qatar Airways flight around 5:30am.”We managed to return home on our own initiative,” Md Shariful Islam, one of the returnees, told The New Nation.He said, they worked for a South Korean company, Hanowa Engineering and Construction, which is working on a project named, “Bismaya New City Project” in South Baghdad. Shariful, who went to Iraq in November last year, said, he was getting handsome salary from the company but he returned home on security ground. He further said 200 more Bangladeshis who work for the same company might return home on July 10 and July 14.Twenty-seven other workers of the same company returned home on security ground on July 1.Around 4,000 Bangladeshis are working at the company in constant fear of attacks by Sunni insurgents as the latter have already swept over a large part of Iraq’s north since June 5 and are advancing to the south. Over 25,000 Bangladeshis are working in various sectors in Iraq. Of them, 1,500 are living in Mosul, a vulnerable state of Iraq, according to an official figure of the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment.Of them over 14,000 Bangladeshi nationals are working there in the construction sector.While talking to this correspondent on Tuesday night, Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Engr Khandoker Mosharraf Hossain said, “The government is closely monitoring the situation in Iraq and will take necessary measures for the wellbeing of Bangladesh nationals there.”He said, the Bangladesh embassy in Baghdad has been kept ready to help repatriate Bangladeshis willing to return home. “So far, we know, Bangladeshis in Iraq are safe, and the embassy will help if anybody wants to return home from Iraq,” he added. The Minister further said his ministry is in regular communication with the Bangladesh embassy in Baghdad as well as the neighbouring Bangladesh missions in Iran, Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey to ensure the safety and security of Bangladeshi nationals in Iraq.Earlier, the government suspended sending workers to Iraq till confirmation of safe and secure environment there.
