Omanese officials have said that nearly 70,000 of the total number Bangladeshi workers in that country have ‘run away’ from their employers.A visiting Omanese delegation gave this information to Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain in a meeting in Dhaka on Wednesday.”The Omanese representatives said that some 70,000 Bangladeshis working in different organisations in that country had run away from their employers but could not pin the reason behind their action,” the minister told reporters after the meeting.The minister, however, could not say the period over which this happened. But he felt low pay and poor working conditions might have forced the Bangladeshis to quit their workplaces.The minister said a high-powered committee would be sent to Oman to look into the problem.According to the ministry, about 500,000 Bangladeshi labourers work on that country.He said that the meeting discussed the possibilities of sending of more Bangladeshis to work in the construction, agriculture, fisheries and other sectors of the Middle Eastern nation.Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment Secretary Shawkat Hossain, Director General of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) Begum Shamsun Nahar and Advisor to the Omanese government’s manpower ministry Saleh Al Amri were present at the meeting.
