Bangladesh will lift the ban on worker migration to the Maldives after a government delegation was sent to investigate allegations of fraudulent recruitment, forced labour and migrant unemployment.
In September Minivan News reported that the Bangladesh’s Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) had prohibited immigration over concerns that labourers were being lured to the Maldives with the promise of jobs, only to find themselves unemployed and unable to return to their home country.
BMET Director General Begum Shamsun Nahar told the Dhaka Tribune that “a delegation went to Maldives recently and found that our workers are all employed there.”
However he noted that the wages in the Maldives were low while the migration cost was high, with the average worker spending around Tk 2,00,000 (US$2500) to go to country, despite earning only US$150-190 per month.
The Dhaka Tribune noted that while the Maldivian government’s data put the number of Bangladeshi workers at 80 000, BMET had only recorded the departure of 28,000 workers since 1976.
The head of the delegation to the Maldives, Deputy Secretary of the Expatriates’ Welfare Ministry Badiur Rahman told the Tribune that workers were using middlemen to bypass immigration procedures, “and overcome the limited interest of Maldivians in becoming labourers.”
According to Mohamed Ali Janah, former President of the Maldives Association of Construction Industry (MACI), the lack of a functioning labour management system combined with this domestic labour shortage prohibits employers from recruiting legitimate workers amongst the expatriate population.
Janah estimated earlier this year that the country’s illegal foreign workforce was potentially at 100,000 people, he said the failure to implement a functioning system of labour management in the Maldives had made it hugely difficult to find legitimate workers among the expatriate population.
“Why would we want to hire potentially illegal labour, we don’t know who these people are,” he said. “We have a huge number of projects in the country right now, so we will have to find the people to work, even if it is from China or Cambodia or another country.”
The Maldives was this year placed on the US State Department’s Tier Two Watch List for Human Trafficking for the fourth consecutive year.
As with last year’s report, the country avoided a downgrade to the lowest tier “because [the] government has a written plan that, if implemented, would constitute making significant efforts to meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.”
However US Ambassador-at-large for the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Luis CdeBaca, noted during the release of the report that the six countries again spared a downgrade would not be eligible next year – including Afghanistan, Barbados, Chad, Malaysia, Thailand and the Maldives.
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There were only 28,000 Bangalhis who left their country since 1976? Where the hell did the rest of them come from? Did they rise out of the sea? Bangalhis can't count. And, yes, of course they are all "employed" here. They've forced the locals out of jobs. Yameen, close the border and find employment to our people.
Bangladeshi workers who unfortunately find themselves stuck in the Maldives should ensure their passports are with them at all times.....DONT LET YOUR CROOKED EMPLOYERS KEEP YOU PASSPORT. THIS ADVICE ALSO APPLIES TO INDIAN AND NEPALESE WORKERS.
You guys.....and I mean expat workers.....are advised to seek employment in civilised countries where you will not be abused and exploited.
I'm sure Yameen will get this sorted asap! Human rights being such a high priority for him and his supporters.
How Supreme. How many Maldivians clean their own streets, take out your own rubbish, labour to build the new towns and residential buildings, run the stores, waiter in restaurants, and burn all that garbage away? 100,000 Bangladeshi's on strike would cripple the Maldives.
I dont like any kind of discrimination as we all are humans, referring to them as "bangalhees" is plain racism. People think racism is when a white points finger at a black but racism comes in all kinds of forms and this is one.
However that being said, 80,000 bangladesh people immigrating to Maldives for work is extreme in a population of 300,000. This should be controlled and why not unemployed maldivians takes up the jobs instead.
If this goes at this rate, there will come a day that it will 200,000 immigrants in there. A small place as such is too crowded, why crowd it more. We need the space for us, for our development of the country.
Instead of making racist comments against your expat workers, you short, fat and dim people need to do your own dirty work.....then you won't have to employ so many foreigners.....who are then underpaid, mistreated and exploited.....so much so that Bangladesh imposed a ban on its workers!.....clearly you retards have no shame.
I can see your hospitals and schools closing down due to a lack of skilled workers from India. Are there ANY Maldivian surgeons, professors or computer programmers.....or are you all a bunch of drug addicts?
Maldivians will become a minority in their own country if we let these vermin infest our country even further.
Kick them all out. Crime will reduce and our daughters can roam the streets freely without these punks harassing them. Prior to their arrival, Maldives was 100% crime free.
bangladesh to maldives main power