RIYADH, 28 July 2005 — Four hundred Bangladeshis are stranded in the Kingdom, while some 1,300 were deported as a result of a major crackdown on overstayers in Saudi Arabia.
“Most of the workers are Umrah and Haj overstayers. They were caught with other nationals during raids by the authorities,” Bangladesh’s Ambassador Maj. Gen. (Retd) Ikramul Haque told Arab News.
In addition to the 600 Bangladeshi workers deported last week, three special Saudi Arabian Airlines flights ferried some 700 Bangladeshi workers to Dhaka on Sunday.
Another 400 workers are in various detention camps awaiting repatriation. The workers had to sell their assets to raise money for coming to the Kingdom in search of jobs. Each one of them had paid around 1,50,000 taka to middlemen, travel and recruiting agents to travel to the Kingdom as Umrah/Haj pilgrim or as a worker on free employment visa where he has to find a livelihood and pay an annual fee to his official sponsor. Each year some 50,000 Haj pilgrims and a large number of Umrah pilgrims come here from Bangladesh.
The overstayers are caught by a joint task force comprising officials from the Riyadh Governorate, Riyadh Municipality, police and Passport Department during raids in various districts in the Kingdom. Those arrested include Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indians and Sri Lankans who did not have valid resident permits and were involved in illegal businesses.
The ambassador said that he would take up the issue with the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment through his Foreign Ministry in Dhaka to find ways of containing this problem.
Meanwhile, the bodies of seven expatriate Bangladeshi workers who died of suffocation following a devastating fire in a sofa and curtain manufacturing factory in Taif on July 9, were repatriated last week.
As preliminary expenses, 40,000 taka were given to the family of each dead worker by the owner of the Saudi factory. Besides, the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment provided 20,000 taka to each family for funeral expenses.
