Jamil Mahmud

Following a prolonged rough ride, driven by the pandemic, the country’s aviation sector is finally turning around as flight operations and the number of passengers flying from the Dhaka airport have almost tripled in three months. 

Sending migrant workers abroad continued to remain inadequate amid the pandemic compared to what the situation was during pre-pandemic times, which posed a challenge for the labour migration sector.

Mohiuddin Belal, an engineer based in UAE, heaved a sigh of relief on August 4 when he heard that his host country had lifted the flight ban from Bangladesh after about three months.

Mohammed Suman Miah died in Qatar on April 29, 2020 at the age of 34.

A visa embargo imposed by South Korea on Bangladesh for the last four months has left potential migrant workers wishing to work in the East Asian country under its Employment Permit System in limbo.

At least 3,437 Bangladeshis died in different parts of Saudi Arabia, where the Bangladesh consulate general in Jeddah has its jurisdictionbetween July 2019 and June 2021.

Mustakim Alam quit his job and came home from Kuwait amid the Covid-19 pandemic in May last year after living there for over seven years, working at a printing press.

The government’s decision to vaccinate migrant workers with Sinopharm jabs will not resolve the problem being faced by the Saudi Arabia-bound workers as the vaccine is not yet on the kingdom’s priority list, say recruiters.

Migrant worker Shahidul Islam, 38, returned home in January this year after injuring his right leg in a workplace accident while employed as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh.

The government has decided to pay up to Tk 25,000 for each Bangladeshi worker’s stay in hotel in Saudi Arabia for their seven-day on-arrival institutional quarantine.

The government is going to make informal grassroots service providers in labour migration accountable by formally recognising them under the relevant law with the aim to end fraudulence in the sector.

Bangladeshi migrants trying to go to Saudi Arabia have found themselves in more trouble as airlines are now saying that hotel bookings for the seven-day on-arrival institutional quarantine must be done by passengers.

A mob looted and vandalised around 50 shops and malls owned by Bangladeshis in Brandfort of Free State province in South Africa on Tuesday.

Around 10,000 Bangladeshis in South Africa are now living in fear after several hundred shops of expatriates were vandalised, torched, and looted by mobs in Free State’s Bloemfontein last week.

Bangladeshis are facing huge obstacles to joining work in Saudi Arabia following a travel advisory from the Middle Eastern country. The expatriates’ welfare ministry has not yet taken any visible steps to address their issues.

Several thousand Saudi-bound Bangladeshi migrant workers have been struggling due to the new travel advisory given by Saudi Arabia, which requires medical insurance, covering the risk of Covid-19 infections and hotel reservations for institutional quarantine.

With a two-year job “contract” and dreams of a better life, Akhi Begum (not her real name) left for Saudi Arabia in mid-2019.

Migrant worker Nazim Uddin returned home from Saudi Arabia in May last year amid the Covid-19 pandemic. His residence permit expired after a few months, meaning he could not return to the Gulf country.

The government’s decision to suspend all international flights for a week from Wednesday onwards to contain the spread of Covid-19 has put aspiring migrant workers in a perplexing situation.

In the space of two years, Rubel Miah has seen the value of his wages at his job in Beirut plummet to one-fifth of what he could earlier convert to US dollars and send home to his family.