Maldives Repatriates over 3,200 BD Expats So Far amid Pandemic

So far, the Maldives has repatriated more than 3,200 Bangladeshis through a government-initiated evacuation exercise of undocumented workers living in the country, reports rajjee.mv.

In a Saturday publication, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that a total of 3,269 illegal Bangladeshi employees in the country have been sent home to date.

The Maldives repatriated 187 Bangladeshis on a single flight from their national airline, Maldivian, to Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Saturday.

During a national address in May, President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih declared that more than 1,500 illegal migrant workers will be repatriated from the Maldives in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis.

Following the declaration, the Maldives Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of economic development started working together to repatriate thousands of unidentified Bangladeshi citizens living illegally in the Maldives.

Up to Saturday, Bangladeshi citizens had the largest number of reported cases in the Maldives, at 1,257, which is 52.16% of the overall number of cases: 2,410.

Bangladeshis, after being taken to the Maldives and mostly leaving unsupervised, are expected to live in congested living spaces in large numbers.

As a consequence, according to the Maldivian TV channel study, they have been identified as susceptible to infection in the island world.