Bangladesh minister arrives for labor talks

A seven-member Bangladesh team, headed by Minister for Expat Welfare and Overseas Employment Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, arrived on an official visit to the Kingdom on Sunday.
The minister will hold talks on labor issues with his Saudi counterpart Adel Fakeih on Monday.
On arrival at the King Khaled International Airport, the minister was received by Deputy Labor Minister Ahmed Al-Fehaid, Director for International Cooperation at the Labor Ministry Prince Saud bin Talal bin Badar, Ambassador Mohamed Shahidul Islam, Consul General A.K.M. Shahidul Karim and senior officials.
The visiting delegation includes Mohamed Abul Kalam Azad, senior secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office; Khandaker Iftekhar Haider, secretary at the Ministry of Expat Welfare and Overseas Employment; and Begum Shamsun Nahar, director general of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training.
Speaking to Arab News, Ambassador Islam said: “It is an important bilateral visit which will focus on a wide range of issues connected with labor affairs.”
He added that the topics of discussion would include human resources development, manpower training, recruitment of Saudi manpower to the Kingdom and other matters related to the labor affairs of the two countries.
Besides holding bilateral talks with Fakeih, Hossain will also attend a luncheon hosted by Deputy Labor Minister Moufarrej Al-Haqbani on Monday. He would meet members of his community in the evening at the Riyadh Palace Hotel.
During its five-day stay in the Kingdom, the delegation would visit Dammam, Madinah and Jeddah to meet senior government officials and community members.
There are around 1.5 million Bangladeshi expatriates in the Kingdom. The Bangladesh Embassy has in recent times urged its nationals to get machine readable passports (MRPs) as soon as possible.
“Although the deadline for the issuance of such passports has been set for November 2015, we do not want a rush at the last moment,” a senior official from the Riyadh mission told Arab News on Sunday.
Nearly 1,000 Bangladeshis line up daily at their embassy to get MRPs and to get other consular work done.
The new MRP is modestly priced at SR125 for workers, while professionals have to pay SR425 for their passports. It contains 48 pages.
Around 750,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers benefited from an amnesty offer for illegal workers to correct their status by the Saudi authorities. About 400,000 undocumented workers’ passports were renewed and issued while around 350,000 workers, who were at the risk of becoming undocumented, were able to change their professions.