Tag: visa

Letter on draconian immigration

Dear Editor,

I am a Maldivian, who is studying in UK. I have been living in UK for the past five years and have always been keen in travelling and exploring other places and cultures of the world.

For much of the westerns and other nations, Maldives is heaven on earth. It is a paradise they all highly value and dream of visiting for once at least in their life time. For they are all true regarding this. And I have no doubt their dream holidays are nothing beyond perfect and excellent during their visit to Maldives.

But they don’t enjoy Maldives only because of its sandy beaches and crystal clear waters. Nor it is only due to the exotic resorts or the delicious food. It is all about the hospitality and the welcome they recieve as well. Maldivians are well known to host their visitors with utmost care and excellent treatment. From the time the forigners land in Maldives and until they leave, they are always treated with a smile. They never face any difficulties or problems at the airport, transit to their hotel, stay in the resort and journey back to the airport. We serve them well with proficiency and excellence. This is how Maldivians are.

But I would like to tell you all some of the experiences I have faced while travelling to other countries. I have to say unfortunately I didn’t face the very same hospitality I expected despite the fact I was also paying for my trip just like the way other foreign visitors do when they travel to Maldives. My passport clearly says on its first page that the Foreign Minister requests the bearer of it to pass Maldivian national to pass freely without any problems for me. I guess this must be their in every country’s passport and to be honest no one cares about what is written on that page.

I went on a trip to Europe trip this winter. I was travelling on a Schengen Visa. I visited Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Italy and France. I was travelling with my study friends who were all British citizens and there was one Malaysian citizen too with us.

At each airport of the above mentiones countries, the immigration stopped me and asked lots of questions which made me feel very unwelcome and uncomfortable. Despite having the Schengen visa and all other travelling documents like tickets and travel cheques, I found myself subjected to unnecessary scrutiny by these immigrations. The French and the German immigration were the worst. My British colleagues passed the immigration in less than a second, without facing a single question from no one. I am not surprised for them as they are EU nationals, but what surprised me was my Malaysian friend. He was treated just like the British nationals and he did not face any questions from them. He even didn’t need prior visa to enter these countries. I was very surprised.

Here I am visiting some countires in Europe who send thousands of tourists to my country every day and I have been treated like some alien trying to intrude in to their property or something. It was very upsetting and I hope no other Maldivian faces this. May be the Maldivian diplomatic passport holders might not face what I have been through, but this doesn’t mean there aren’t simple ordinary maldivians like me who do travel through europe. I believe its time the Maldivian goverment (I mean all of you) try and work more harder with the Schengen blog to include Maldives in their Visa Waiver List. This would make Maldivians travel free without hastle in the EU, just like for Malaysians.

The previous governments foreign minister Mr Fathuhullah Jameel has travelled all around the world on his diplomatic passport but never bothered to do this during his long FM job. But can you all (the new government) do this for us, for the sake of simple ordianry Maldivian Passport holders? I don’t think Maldivians are a risk for the EU as we have visa free entry to UK and Ireland as well. The government could bridge this as a promoting factor for us to get into the Schengen blog. Can you all please do your best to get us travel free and avoid the difficulties at immigration at EU countries? I hope you all will work hard for this and this is my request as a Maldivian from you all. I believe we also deserve to have freedom of movement and be treated with respect just the way we treat the EU nationals when they come to our country, don’t we?

The next I experienced was during last year summer. I was going back home, Male’ from London. My flight was stopping at Dubai and it was a long transit of more than 24 hours.

I didn’t want to stay this long period inside the airport building and so thought of going out to see the city of dubai during this long transit period. To my surprise I needed a visa to go out. I don’t understand why. A person from Lithuania doesn’t need a visa to enter Dubai but here I am, a Maldivian, whose country has more close ties with Dubai needs a visa to see the city for just 24 hours. Any ways I asked for a visa which they issued me for US$75.

Now that’s a lot for a visa of 24 hours, isn’t it? And not only this, the authorities who issued the visa were utterly rude and unprofessional. They were very nice and pleasant with the white Europeans but I noticed they were very different with tone and customer relations with the dark skinned asians. And I was one of them.

I could not believe all this and I was very dissapointed. I did visit Doha also a year ago and faced a similar situation. I had to pay a visa fee to enter Doha too just for two days. I don’t think this is the way we should be treated. Maybe it is an arab thing, I don’t know, but I didn’t deserve it. I don’t think Arabs are treated like that when they visit Maldives. First of all we give them more respect I think because they are Muslims. Secondly they all get to enter Maldives free of visa without having a penny to pay for it. So why did I have to face the opposite when I visited their coutries? They are more rich in natural resources than Maldives and yet I have to pay for visa to see their country but they don’t have to pay nothing to see my country.

This is not fair. Plus I have to face discrimination and rude behavious from them when we treat them with respect and dignity. I believe these things have to addressed at formal level by all of you with these Arab and other countries. And I don’t think its fair to give them free visas when they charge so much from us to visit their country. May be its time and best that Maldives government also charge a visa fee from them too. I am sure their nationals are capable of paying the same visa fee I paid to see their cities for few hours or days. Plus the visa fee could generate some income to our economy too just like the way ot helps theirs. So I think it is better to bring some changes to the famous ’30 day free visa on arrival to Maldives’, maybe make some countries not included in this famous logo.

Maldivians are not generally big time travellers. But there are lots of us who do travel, aspire travelling and wants to travel. If all of you and the government make travel easy for us by asking other countries to make us visa free and provide hastle free immigrations, it can put more maldivians into travelling. Travelling bridges societies and cultures. It opens hearts and unites people. It makes us realise about others in this world and helps us more to realise how much more is there to life. So please can you all work on this. Make travelling easy for us. Ask other governments to make visa free for Maldivian citizens. At the moment there are just a handful of countries where we can go without a visa. I was very surprised to know that I need a visa to enter even Morocco as a tourist, a country whose national made us all muslims. So I guess the foreign ministry needs to do a lot of work.

I appreciate the new look of the website of our foreign ministry. But its sad to know it doesn’t contain a list of the countries where Maldivian citizens can travel to, as a tourist, without a visa. I think this list is very important and should be there on the ministries website (always up tp date). Also surprisingly there is no proper contact email address (for Maldivians) of the ministry given on the website.

I hope this letter is not offensive to any one of you. The purpose of this letter is to let you all know how an ordinary maldivian feels when he is subjected to such taunt by other countries immigrations. And its not my fault that I need a visa to enter those coutries. I hope you all will try to work with other foreign governments to make us visa and hastle free when we travel to other coutnries. For we are all humans and we all deserve freedom of movement, respect and dignity.

IY

All letters are the sole view of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of Minivan News. If you would like to write a letter, please submit it to [email protected]

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President upholds ACC’s postponement of border control shakeup

President Mohamed Nasheed has upheld the decision to postpone the roll-out of a new electronic border control system for the Maldives in accordance with concerns by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) over the project’s selection process.

The President’s Office confirmed to Minivan News that Nasheed has requested that the Department of Immigration and Emigration adhere to the ACC’s guidance until it rules over the next step for the project, with no appeal expected to be heard on the current decision.

Work on the project was suspended soon after being agreed last October, when the ACC raised concerns over allegations of corruption in the decision making process.

The ongoing criticism by the ACC of the Nexbis border control agreement has itself come under fire amidst accusations that it represents a politically-motivated attack on wider government reforms, according to a source within the immigration department.

A spokesperson for the ACC was not available for comment at the time of going to press.

However, the ACC this week sent a confidential letter to Immigration Controller Ilyas Hussain Ibrahim calling for approval from the Maldives Cabinet or National Planning Council (NPC) over concerns regarding corruption within the decision making process for the deal. The letter was also leaked to the press.

Prior to the President’s decision to hold the project, a source within the immigration department told Minivan News that it had remained confident that the project, signed with Malaysia-based Nexbis in October as part of attempts to prevent abuse of the working visa system, would be “greenlit” by either the cabinet or the NPC.

Having already been approved by two independent audits, the source claimed that President Nasheed had also indicated to local media this week that he saw no reason to oppose the existing agreement for the new border control system.

However, the immigration department said that it will comply with the President’s orders and wait for any further decisions by the ACC relating to border control.

Alongside refuting any suggestions that corruption had played a role within the decision to choose Nexbis, the Immigration Department insider claimed that technical criticisms of the system were part of wider political moves to try and disrupt the government’s reform of the border control system.

However, the anti-corruption body is said to have highlighted a number of issues concerning the different models used to identify travel documents such as passports under the visa scheme.

“The ACC does not have the technical background to be able to criticise and understand the [border control] system,” said the immigration department source. “More education is needed [within the commission].”

The Nexbis border control project had aimed to make use of fingerprint and facial recognition devices that according the Department of Immigration could be set up within four to six months as part of the first phase of the project focusing on working visas – essentially matching individuals to records without the requirement for paper documents.

However, the President’s decision means that the work will continue to remain on hold since the signing in October.

“On the very day we signed the contract, barely hours, maybe minutes later, the ACC had drafted a letter saying there was suspicions of corruption involved with the decision,” said the immigration department source, who asked not to be identified. “From that moment, we have stopped work on the system as requested by the ACC.”

When news of the disruption broke in November, shares in Nexbis immediately dropped 6.3 percent. Minivan News has since spoken to other foreign investors in the Maldives who have expressed concern that their share prices were at risk of becoming collateral in local politics.

The injunction issued by the ACC effectively places an indefinite delay on the project. The commission has not finalised an investigation since 2008.

Trafficking concerns

Immigration reforms, of which the Nexbis project was part, were intended in part to address the government’s serious concerns over labour trafficking.

Last year, the Maldives was placed on the US State Department watch list for human trafficking, a crime which may actually narrowly eclipse the fishing industry as the second-largest contributor to the Maldivian economy after tourism, US$43.8 million on paper but potentially reaching up to US$200 million.

The Nexbis system was said to allow the immigration department to store and retrieve the biometric data of expatriates working in the country, effectively circumventing the abuse of paper documentation and curbing the ability of workers – and traffickers – to operate in the country.

“We currently have a large number of illegal expatriates running around the country,” another source at the immigration department told Minivan News back in 2010. “Right now estimate that there are 100,000 foreign workers in the country, but there are no official figures on how many may be illegal.”

Workers were arriving in the country legally “but once in the country they discard the documents and flee to islands, and seek better payment.”

Many companies in the Maldives were benefiting “and facilitating” the problem, the source said, which was impacting those companies “who do operate legally and pay visa fees to the government.”

Ensuring that workers could be accurately identified, even without documentation, was the key benefit of the new system, the source explained.

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“Efficiency” at heart of business concerns for expatriate insurance plan: MNCCI

The Maldives National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MNCCI) has called for greater efficiency in how the country’s labour and immigration officials deal with processing expatriate workers before imposing measures requiring employers to provide insurance packages for foreign staff upon arrival.

Immigration Controller Ilyas Hussein Ibrahim told Haveeru this week that although new applicants for work visas in the Maldives would now be required to have an insurance policy provided to them, a similar requirement for existing expatriate workers expected to come into place in March had been postponed.

Ahmed Adheeb Abdul Gafoor, Treasurer of the MNCCI, has said that although the business organisation does not hold any objections to insuring employees, it was hoping for more consistent and efficient processing of paper work for expatriate workers before implementing a system of mandatory insurance.

Notable issues of concern selected by the MNCCI’s Treasurer included difficulties in acquiring insurance for expatriate workers before they had arrived within the Maldives, the time frame afforded to industry to implement the changes and the actual relationships between the government and insurance providers over the new requirements.

“The current levels of bureaucracy involved with dealing with immigration and labour authorities for expatriates is very inefficient,” he said. “Under the insurance plans, there is no defining of expatriates coming here, so we are having to follow the same procedure for every single foreign worker at the moment.

Adheeb told Minivan News that there has been “concern”, particularly in “high turnover employment areas” such as construction, about the exact requirements for each type of employee bought into the country.

“High turnover [of staff] is a big problem, particularly in the case of small construction projects – of about three months,” he said. “It may be preferable to bring workers out for six months instead of the three required and whenever one expatriate returns home, we have to go through the same insurance process for each employee.

Adheeb claimed that protecting expatriates and keeping skilled workers within the Maldives was very important for business development.

“We have to accept that the Maldives does not have enough local labour force to meet the country’s requirements,” he said. “We need to keep hold of skilled expatriates.”

When asked whether measures such as insurance may bring greater accountability for businesses requiring expatriate labour, Adheeb claimed that a number of construction groups already had their own insurance plans in place and added that he was in favour of insurance programmes over all.

“We have some concerns over this move; for starters, we would like to see the current procedures in dealing with bureaucracy made more efficient,” he said. “I would like to see faster service, some companies are fast tracked [through the application process] but this is not the same for all businesses.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Immigration and Emmigration was unable to respond to calls from Minivan News at the time of going to press.

However, Immigration Controller Ibrahim told Haveeru this week that policies for determining whether suitable insurance policies and enforcing the new insurance rules were in place had not been decided upon, but he was confident employers were getting to grips with the measures.

“Because of the announcement, many people have begun insuring. It is something that must be done in the future. But right now only the new foreign workers are required to insure,” he told the paper.

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Exploitation of Bangladeshi workers worth hundreds of millions, says former High Commissioner

Exploitation of foreign workers rivals fishing as the second most profitable sector of the Maldivian economy after tourism, according to conservative estimates of the number of Bangladeshi workers showing up at their commission in Male’ after being abandoned at the airport by unscrupulous employment agents.

Former Bangladeshi High Commissioner to the Maldives, Professor Selina Mohsin, who finished her assignment in July, told Minivan News that every day 40 Bangladeshi nationals were turning up at reception, “having come to the Maldives and found they have nothing to do. So naturally they come here to the High Commission.”

Most of the stranded workers were recruited in rural areas of Bangladesh by local brokers, who would work alongside a Maldivian counterpart.

“The Bangladeshi counterpart charges the worker a minimum of US$2000, but it goes up to $US4000. This money is collected by the counterpart and divided: typically three quarters to Maldivian broker and one quarter to the Bangladeshi counterpart,” Professor Mohsin explained, prior to her departure.

“Many workers sell their land, their property, even their homesteads – putting their wives in a relative’s house – and come here for employment they have been told will fetch them between $US300-400 a month. But when they arrive, they find they have no employment.”

Stranded in a foreign country and unable to speak English or Dhivehi, the workers either melt into the Bangladeshi community and become illegal workers, working for low wages in substandard conditions, or present themselves at the High Commission and beg for help.

In some cases workers are collected from the airport by the brokers and have their passports confiscated before being dumped on the streets of Male’, Professor Mohsin explains. Typically the worker arrives with a local mobile phone number – inevitably disconnected – and does not know the name of the broker.

“They eventually end up at my office,” she says, pointing to the Commission’s reception area. “Often they are in a state of shock at arriving to discover they have no employment. I try to put them in a guest house for 7-10 days and see if they can be repatriated, but many can’t and because they owe sums of money they take any job they can – sometimes US$70-80 a month.”

Taking into account the Bangladeshi broker’s cut, and based purely on the numbers of stranded expatriates presenting themselves at the high commission, indicates an employment trafficking scam worth upwards of $43.8 million year.

Even at conservative figures based on the numbers of Bangladeshi nationals presenting at the commission, this rivals the country’s US$46 million fishing industry (2007, Department of National Planning) as the country’s second largest export earner after tourism.

That could likely be just the tip of the iceberg – Professor Mohsin believes the true figure is far higher, pinpointing one operation as bringing in upwards of $100 million.

Work permit discrepancies

Under Maldivian law foreign workers arriving in the Maldives must have a work permit issued by the Immigration Department. This is obtained through an employer or agent, who must first request a foreign worker quota from the Ministry of Trade and Human Resources.

These are obtained “very easily”, Professor Muhsin contends.

“The Maldivian [side] gets into connection with the Bangladeshi brokers, gets a business permit from the Ministry of Human Resources, says they want to recruit and gets a quota for more workers than they require – if they require any at all – and then ask a Bangladeshi counterpart to bring in the workers.”

In an effort to control the flow of workers into the country, some High Commissions – such as Bangladesh – also require that work permits for their nationals be attested by the local commission before they are considered valid.

First Secretary at the Indian High Commission, Naryan Swamy, told Minivan News that the Indian High Commission ceased attesting work permits 3-4 years ago, although the policy remained in place in certain Gulf countries to reduce the exploitation of female domestic servants.

“Our major problem is not forged documents, but people who are given a rosy picture in India about working in the Maldives and want to go abroad. They might be earning US$200 in India, but are told they can earn US$400. When they arrive they get US$120-140,” Swamy says, adding that the burgeoning domestic economy in India has markedly reduced the number of workers falling into such a trap.

“On average we receive 2-3 people a day with this problem. Most of the time we can talk to the employers – usually workers are unsatisfied with the conditions.”

Where the Indian High Commission can identify the employment brokers, “we don’t give up easily,” he hinted. “If we have a case we don’t just write letters – we follow up. The system sometimes takes a long time, but we don’t give up.”

Professor Mohsin acknowlegdes that India “has a far better system than ours, and we allow far more innocent people to come through. But even in India’s case, professionals like doctors on many of the islands are treated badly and looked down on.”

However with the system of attestation in place, the importing of Bangladeshi workers now depends on forged documentation, she contends.

“I haven’t attested a single work permit since April. How are they entering? Why are they still coming at all?” she asks.

“Recently I caught one Maldivian man who was bringing in over 1800 people. I asked him, ‘what will you do with them?’ He said there were ‘many projects’. I asked him to show me the projects and he couldn’t.

“I asked him if he had cleared this with the Ministry of Human Resources, Youth and Sports. I rang to check and it had – it was attested by one of the ministries of this government.

“I signed but had questions in my mind – why were the terms and conditions so small? There should be pages and pages – for 1800 people there should be hundreds of pages, and details of the project.

“But I had doubts in my mind so declared my signature null and void within Bangladesh within 4-5 days. I checked the company – it took me months – and then I found out the whole thing was a scam totalling over US$300 million.

“Those people would have come [to Male’] had I not checked. Had I not done it, 1800 people would have sold their homes and become delinquent in the Maldives. This did not bother a Maldivian broker – hell is not good enough for the people who are doing this.”

Maldives placed on human trafficking watch-list

Most cases that arrive at the High Commission involve trafficked workers. The problem is large enough to have attracted the attention of the US State Department, which placed the Maldives on its watch-list for human trafficking following what it described as the government’s “failure to investigate or prosecute trafficking-related offenses or take concrete actions to protect trafficking victims and prevent trafficking in the Maldives.”

In its 2010 Human Trafficking report – published less than a month after the Maldives was given a seat on the UN Human Rights Council – the State Department estimated that half the Bangladeshis in the Maldives had arrived illegally “and most of these workers are probably victims of trafficking”.

It highlighted the construction and service sectors as primary offenders, and noted the prevalence of “fraudulent recruitment practices, confiscation of identity and travel documents, withholding or non-payment of wages, and debt bondage.”

Most trafficking in the country involves exploitation of foreign labour, according to Professor Mohsin, “but in extreme cases it has been for prostitution.”

After repatriating a Bangladeshi girl who had been forced into prostitution in the Maldives, Professor Mohsin ceased attesting work permits for Bangladeshi women altogether.

“I said I would allow no more women. I will not allow any more Bangladeshi women to come to the Maldives because they are used for the wrong purposes. I have even met young boys who work in houses and are physically assaulted. I have spoken to people to whom this has happened: I told one guy, just give me a complaint and I will catch the person. But he was too scared [of retaliation].”

Government complicity

Professor Muhsin acknowledged that government’s response to her outcry might be “Why is the Bangladeshi High Commissioner creating such a racket?”

“But tell me – if every day you are inundated with dozens and dozens of workers who are in a state of shock – then it becomes a very big issue for me. I have to know why they aren’t rigorous enough at the airport.”

With a single international airport funnelling foreign workers into the country, the Maldivian authorities should be able to fix the problem any time they want, Professor Mohsin contends.

“[Bangladesh] has many airports and a very porous border: we share thousands of miles with India. Some people even have houses half in Bangladesh and half in India, such was the border drawn by Sir Radcliffe. That’s why it is very easy to cross to South India and fly to the Maldives.

“But in Maldives there is only one international airport, and people have to come out of it. Tell me – if you don’t want me in your house, how can I enter? How can I enter if the door is locked?

“What I want to say is: stop them at the airport. If your database is correct, if you are rigorous, if you have scanned their passport as you say, then you at least have a copy of the passport. If you are the employer [to whom the quota is allocated] you know the broker. Nobody is taking this seriously enough.”

Response

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ahmed Naseem said he was “very concerned” at the “strong wording” in the US State Department’s report, noting that human trafficking was “a very harsh term” to describe people brought to the Maldives by unscrupulous employers and agents.

“Anyone can get a [tourist] visa on arrival, and we don’t discriminate just because somebody is Bangladeshi,” he said.

He observed that all employment agents were registered with the Ministry of Human Resources: “I think they have a lot of knowledge about the problem and know exactly what is going on,” he said.

“We are researching the issues mentioned in the [State Department’s] 2010 report. There are a lot of illegals here and not enough jobs – we’re looking into the mater.”

Hussein Ismail, Deputy Minister for Human Resources, claimed it was “impossible” to enter the Maldives with forged documents, “because whatever employment approval we issue is electronically copied to immigration and checked against a person’s name. The database is shared, so they know when an employment visa has not been issued.”

When a work permit is approved it must be used within 50 days, “so there will be [arrivals] pending,” he noted, even if a High Commission were to cease attesting work permits.

Rights and treatment

The rights and treatment of Bangladeshi workers – including those employed legally – remains an issue for the Maldives.

“I once had somebody call me to say he was surrounded by 500 Bangladeshis because their salaries had not been paid for one year,” recalls Professor Mohsin. “I called the employer – I was very annoyed. He said to me: ‘I will not pay their salaries. What are you going to do about it?”

When workers fell into such a situation, she explains, they had little legal recourse or judicial instruments, and any civil case was conducted in Dhivehi to the bewilderment of the worker – even if they could find a lawyer.

“It is incumbent on the government of the Maldives to provide legal services to those who have been deprived of their rights to their salary – it should not be my business,” Professor Mohsin says.

Even the Immigration Department does not employ a Bangla speaker, despite the scope of the problem and their contribution to the economy, relying instead on the Bangladeshi High Commission to provide interpreters. An immigration official confided to Minivan News that while they were aware of problems with brokers, the language barrier made it difficult to determine what was going on when the worker arrived. Instead, he said, the Department relied on glimmers obtained from workers who approached authorities after they had acquired some Dhivehi, often when departing the country.

Professor Mohsin said she was at a loss to describe the abysmal treatment of Bangladeshi workers in the Maldives, given the centuries of close cultural association between the two countries.

“Historically things like tobacco smoking and rice eating were all learned from Bengal, because the Maldives had nothing but cowry shells,” Professor Mohsin says. “That was the Maldives’ only export – what would traders bring back in return? Rice, textiles, tobacco, wood… one of the country’s rulers was even a Bengali princess.

“I find it very painful now that a Maldivian coming from such a tiny country, and dependent on others for food, can look down on Bangladeshi workers who are doing all the menial work that no Maldivian will do. Why have they changed suddenly? What is this ethos that allows the country to employ workers from other countries and treat them so badly?”

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Zakir Naik banned from entering UK to lecture on freedom of expression

The UK has banned Islamic speaker Dr Zakir Naik from entering the country, preventing him from giving a series of lectures in Sheffield and northern England on ‘Freedom of Expression: An Islamic Perspective’.

Dr Naik recently presented a series of lectures in the Maldives at the invitation of the Ministry for Islamic Affairs. One session in particular made headlines when Naik was confronted by a self-declared apostate, who later reconverted to Islam after two days of counselling in police custody.

News agency Reuters reported that Conservative Home Secretary Theresa May had barred Dr Naik from entering the country because “numerous comments made by Dr Naik are evidence to me of his unacceptable behavior.”

“Coming to the UK is a privilege not a right, and I am not willing to allow those who might not be conducive to the public good to enter,” she said.

The UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Ministry sources as saying the decision to refuse entry to Dr Naik was based on footage in 2006  in which he appeared to endorse terrorism against the United States: “If he [Osama Bin Laden] is terrorising the terrorists, if he is terrorising America the terrorist … I am with him. Every Muslim should be a terrorist,” Naik says in the clip.

Naik has argued that these comments were taken out of context, and has since issued a statement saying he “unequivocally condemns acts of violence including 9/11, 7/7 and 7/11 [the serial train bombing in Mumbai], which are completely and absolutely unjustifiable on any basis.”

The Telegraph also claimed Dr Naik had said Western women made themselves “more susceptible to rape” by wearing revealing clothing.

“Western society has actually degraded (women) to the status of concubines, mistresses and social butterflies, who are mere tools in the hands of pleasure seekers and sex marketeers,” the paper quoted him as saying.

One of the topics of Dr Naik’s planned speeches in the UK was ‘freedom of expression’, and the decision to deny him entry to the country has sparked vigorous debate in the UK among civil rights campaigners.

The Muslim Council of Britain has also expressed “grave concern” over the decision, with Secretary General  Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari stating that “this exclusion order demonstrates the double standards practised by the government concerning freedom of speech. While preachers of hate such as Geert Wilders are free to promote their bigotry in this country, respected Muslim scholars such as Dr Naik are refused entry to the UK under false pretences. It is deeply regrettable this is likely to cause serious damage to community cohesion in our country.”

A spokesman for Dr Naik told the BBC that the Home Ministry’s decision was “deeply regrettable” and that the UK had “bowed to pressure” from “certain groups” to exclude him.

He said Mr Naik had been holding talks in the UK for 15 years and the decision to bar his entry was “disappointing.”

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Work permit deposits for expats to be made to Finance Ministry

Deposits made by foreign nationals wishing to work in the Maldives must now be paid to the Ministry of Finance and not the Department of Immigration and Emigration.

Controller of Immigration Ilyas Hussain Ibrahim, said there was no act regarding deposits before, and they were simply kept by the Ministry of Human Resources.

He noted the transfer to the Finance Ministry was “to make administration easier.”

The deposits are required by the government from all foreign nationals applying for a work permit in the Maldives and must be secured before entering the country, an issue that has caused consternation among employers seeking to employ foreign workers.

Chief at the work visa section of the immigration department, Hassan Khaleel, said the amounts were decided by taking into consideration expenses in case the worker needs to be repatriated.

These expenses include the cost of air-fair back to the worker’s home country, accommodation for a few days in custody, food and transport, and medication if needed.

Minister of Human Resources Youth and Sports, Hassan Lateef, said the transfer of the deposits to the Finance Ministry had been a “cabinet decision,” but noted nothing else has changed in the laws and regulations concerning the deposits.

He said the employer must pay the deposit to the ministry and can also claim it back once the worker has gone back to his or her respective country.

Lateef said the money will be used “in case the employer, or the government, wants to send the employee back to their country, or if he or she is admitted into hospital.”

He said the money would not gain any interest and if it is not collected or used, it will “sit in the Finance Ministry” and be “kept safely.”

Indian nationals pay the least, with deposits of Rf 3,500 (US$272). Sri Lankans must pay Rf 4,000 (US$311) and Bangladeshis Rf 8,000 (US$623). The highest deposit required is for Ecuadorian nationals who must pay Rf 49,000 (US$3,813).

A full list of the deposits for each country can be downloaded here.

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