Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni is scheduled to arrive in Jeddah today on a two-day official visit to hold talks with key officials of the government on bilateral issues, Ambassador Mohamed Shahidul Islam told Arab News.

The minister will be leading a 10-member delegation comprising senior government officials.

During her visit, the minister is expected to pay a courtesy call on Crown Prince Salman, deputy premier and minister of defense.

The minister is scheduled to meet her counterpart Prince Saud Al-Faisal and Labor Minister Adel Fakeih to discuss matters of interests to both countries.

Bangladesh being a member of the OIC, she also is scheduled to meet OIC Secretary-General designate Iyad Madani and discuss with him matters related to the member countries of the organization.

Besides talks on bilateral issues with Prince Saud, Ambassador Islam said, her talks with Fakeih would focus on the ongoing Saudization program. The Kingdom is home to some 1.5 million Bangladeshis.

The two parties will discuss how the Kingdom’s Nitaqat program could affect the Bangladeshi workers in the Kingdom and how it could be resolved in the interest of the two nations.

It is anticipated that the minister’s talks would also focus on the outcome of the visit of a top-level delegation, which visited Dhaka recently.

Recently, Bangladesh decided to send thousands of women aged between 25 and 45 to work as housemaids in the Kingdom. Thousands of women are being trained in Dhaka for overseas employment in the Kingdom, other Middle Eastern countries and Far East countries such as Hong Kong and Singapore.

Earlier in a statement to Arab News, Begum Shamsun Nahar, director general of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), said the recruitment process would commence after an agreement is signed between the two parties.

Such an agreement has to be inked between the labor ministries of the two countries, she added.

The government has stipulated $ 200 as a minimum monthly wage for housemaids working in the Middle East and $ 500 for other jobs. The government launched online registration of female workers last week in Rajshahi, Rangpur and Sylhet.

Shamsun Nahar said the online program eliminates intermediaries in the recruitment process, with women workers dealing directly with the government.

Bangladesh has set up the Prabashi Kalyan Bank (Expatriate Welfare Bank) to cut down migration costs for Bangladeshis. “The bank provides intending migrant workers with collateral-free soft loans and low-cost remittance services,” an official said. He pointed out that this scheme would reduce the need for workers to borrow money from unscrupulous middlemen.

“Those who take out loans from the bank can repay them as they earn abroad.” He also said the government is currently providing adequate training to its overseas workers in their chosen vocation.