Staff Reporter :
Over 12 thousand Bangladeshi stranded expatriate workers are seeking the government’s measures to return to their work in Qatar.
The expatriates said that most of them are passing hard days due to Qatar’s refusal to their entry applications after vacations for more than one year.
Hundreds of Qatar expatriates observed a sit-in-programme in front of Foreign Ministry in Dhaka and urged the government to make it easy to return to workplaces in Qatar.
“We come to the country to enjoy vacations, but fell in put due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Now more than 12,000 of the migrant workers are struggling to return to our workplace in Qatar, but the country is not accepting our entry appeals,” said Azimuddin Haldar, a Qatar expatriate Bangladeshi in front of the Qatar Embassy.
Ismail Hossain, another Qatar expatriate from Chadpur district, told journalists, “We are passing days with serious crisis as we have no income here, but the expenditures of daily life are continuing which pushed us to more vulnerable conditions. Now we have only alternative to return to our work places in Qatar. But the Doha government has not accepted our applications to permit us to enter the country soon.” Ismail, Azimuddin and other expatriates gathered in front of the Qatar embassy in Dhaka. The said country is not accepting Bangladeshi workers visa applications due to the Coronavirus epidemic.
They urged the government to initiate high-level meetings with Doha authority that to remove the hardline process accepting visa applications from Bangaldeshi workers.
The expatriates said that the visa tenures of almost 95 percent of those migrant workers has ended four to six months ago, but cannot return to work due to the hardship of visa entry system.
“The Qatari authority, showed reluctant to accept our visa applications due to the fear of Corona pandemics, but the country is accepting visa applications from our neighboring Indian labours. It is why the Indian government and diplomats convinced Doha to accept their labours’ visa applications,” said Ismail.
Earlier on August, Yousuf Mohamed Al Othman, Foreign Affairs Minister of Qatar assured of issuing exceptional entry permits for stranded expatriate Bangladeshis in short time.
The Qatar Minister came up with the assurance in a meeting with Md Jashim Uddin, Bangladesh Ambassador to Doha while he requested the Qatar Minister in this regards.
He also handed over a list of stranded expatriate Bangladeshis to Yousuf Mohammed.
But, the country yet to accept visa applications from Bangladeshi workers.
