AROUND 1,500 Bangladeshi nationals are stuck back home due to the pandemic, according to a top diplomat.
They are out of the 3,000 men who chose to leave Bahrain since March last year, said Bangladeshi Ambassador Dr Mohammed Nazrul Islam.
He added that 70 per cent are men who were employed by companies and the remaining 30pc are flexi-permit holders.
Dr Islam’s remarks follow a study revealing that 63pc of the Bangladeshi nationals from the GCC were forced to return home despite having proper documents.
The study, ‘Addressing systemic challenges of wage theft: Bangladeshi Covid-19 returnees from the Gulf’ by Bangladesh Civil Society for Migrants (BCSM), surveyed nationals in 45 districts between March 25 and May 6 this year.
It revealed that at least 1,160 Bangladeshi workers who returned home from the GCC countries after February 2020 have lost an average of $2,119 in wages and other entitlements during the pandemic.
“The study has no mention of Bahrain but we estimate that around 1,500 Bangladeshis could not return,” Dr Islam told the GDN. “This is due to the flights suspension, plus there are people whose visas expired and could not get them renewed to return to Bahrain.
“Almost 3,000 men returned home during the pandemic, mostly long-term residents who had lost their jobs and voluntarily returned.
Pressure
“Some of them left without pay and whoever reached out to us we helped them.”
He noted that the men who wanted to come back have been pressuring the mission to get their visas renewed.
The diplomat hoped that fresh visas would soon be opened for his nationals which have been on hold since the murder of a Bahraini imam by a Bangladeshi muezzin (prayer caller) in Muharraq on August 4, 2018.
However, Dr Islam said that there was no “official ban” on visas. “We know that there are many Bahrainis who are looking at recruiting Bangladeshis; this means there is a demand for workers.”
According to the latest statistics there are more than 25,000 undocumented Bangladesh workers out of a total estimated number of 170,000.
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