RIYADH: Four days before the deadline of the amnesty for visa overstayers, Asian embassies in Riyadh have issued over 45,000 travel permits to repatriate their countrymen.

The Bangladesh Embassy here has issued 16,000 outpasses for Bangladeshis to leave the Kingdom, the mission announced Saturday.

Beginning September last year, the government announced an amnesty scheme for overstayers to leave the country before March 23, 2011. The Kingdom is home to some 1.5 million Bangladeshi expatriates who work all over the country.

“Under this scheme, we have already issued more than 16,000 outpasses to those who sought amnesty under the scheme,” said Haroon Or-Rashid, labor counselor at the Bangladesh Embassy. He added that his mission expects another 1,000 applicants during the last leg of the amnesty period.

The amnesty covers anyone who entered the Kingdom on Haj, Umrah or visit visas and continued to stay after the visa’s expiry. As of now, it does not apply to “huroob” cases.

Rashid explained that the amnesty is only limited to a specific group of overstayers and that the embassy has issued travel permits to everyone who has sought consular assistance under the scheme. “We took extra care to identify the proper nationality of applicants since we do not want foreign nationals to make use of our system for their own purposes,” he added.

“With this permit in hand, the holder can approach the passport department for necessary repatriation,” he said.

The Sri Lankan Embassy, which has more than 500,000 workers in the Kingdom, has issued some 80 such permits. According to sources from the embassy, Haj and Umrah overstayers are minimal since pilgrims tend to return home as soon as they perform their pilgrimages.

According to Irfan Shoukat, head of the Consular Section at the Pakistan Embassy, around 5,000 outpasses were issued to Pakistanis at an average of 70-80 permits a day. “We anticipate another 400 during the coming days,” he said.

He said the Consular Section in Riyadh provides consular services to around 700,000 Pakistanis in the Central, Eastern and Northern regions of the Kingdom.

The Nepal Embassy here had already issued around 2,500 outpasses, according to its Charge d' Affaires Paras Ghimire. “We have only 500,000 Nepalese in the Kingdom and such overstayers are minimal," he added.