The uncertainty prevails for 52,400 Bangladeshi migrant workers to join their work places in Saudi Arabia over the visa renew issue.
The recruiting agencies have expressed their grave concern over the issue and said, if the Saudi authorities refused to renew the visa of this large number of expatriates than it will be a great lost for us.
However, the Saudi Arab has cancelled flight with rest of the world on March 25 for the covid-19 pandemic.
According to the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA), until March all kind of process has been done of 86,000 visas where 77,400 visas were Saudi. That was 86-90 per cent of overall visas. The validity of these visas has been expired, because of these visas were issued for 3 months only. Now it needs to renew to entry into Saudi Arab.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment on Wednesday had a meeting with Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia. After the meeting, Foreign Minister Dr Abdul Momen said, whose visa validity has
expired on March, they have needed to renew visa. May be 25,000 visas would have renewed. There is no need to worry. Everybody will go in Saudi Arabia, keep patients, and need more few times.
After FM’s announcement the recruiting agencies fear that if Saudi authorities would not renew the visa then how they would repay the expats. And new process will be time being and consume money. As like as agencies the migrants workers also worried about joining their workplaces.
Mahir Uddin, who came to Dhaka for collecting a Saudi Biman ticket said, I paid money to a recruiting agency for my younger brother’s visa. All procedures, including medical test, has been done but he couldn’t fly because flights has been halted over the pandemic. His visa’s validity has expired. Now it needs to renew visa to fly Saudi Arabia. But it was also not possible for embassy’s shut down. The recruiting agency informed that they did not get any direction for visa renew.
BAIRA’s Secretary General Shamim Ahmed Chowdhury Noman said, after cancelled flights over covid-19, we have issued letters to all agencies to know that how many visas have on the agencies hand. It was 86,000 where 90 per cent was Saudi Arabian. Later, we came to know by the FM’s announcement that 25,000 visas will be renewed but still they did not inform us detail and what decision will take for rest of the visas.
“After opening the Saudi embassy has given us guidelines for the visas we have. By working accordingly, as many workers as possible can go, if not, they cannot go. For that, I have to cancel the visa from my employer and bring a new visa. Those whose employer does not give the visa, they will not be able to go there. We still don’t know how many visas we will get. Many projects have been shut down because of Corona, they may not take 100 where 500 workers were needed. It is not clear to us about the renewal of 25,000 visas,” he said.
Shariful Hasan, head of the BRAC migration programme, said the crisis was caused by the government’s lack of accurate information. He said it was important for the government to have a list of how many people were detained first and how many people could not go after getting visas. But then we could understand how many of our people could not go. That would have made our decision easier. But we could not do that.
The root of all crises is lack of information. But it was not a difficult task, added the BRAC official.
