Jamil Mahmud

Since her husband migrated to Saudi Arabia as a worker in 2018, Kulsum Begum (not her real name) has been looking after their family back home in Tangail.

Bangladeshis will continue to have the opportunity of applying for employment in Italy through the legal process as seasonal and non-seasonal workers in various sectors.

Migrant workers from Bangladesh may soon be able to go to Greece by legal means as the two countries are expected to sign a Memorandum of Understanding in this regard next month.

It took Habibur Rahman around two weeks of hectic journey to enter Greece from Turkey via an illegal route back in July 2020.

Migrant worker Mashiur Titu saw his monthly income in Lebanon drop by half in two years due to a prolonged economic crisis in the Arab country.

Employers in Malaysia will bear Bangladeshi workers’ migration costs incurred in that country, the expatriates’ welfare ministry said in a press release after the signing of an MoU between the two countries.

Malaysia will soon open its market for Bangladeshi workers, ending a freeze of more than three years, but concerns remain over the syndication of a few agents and the high cost of migration -- major factors behind labour exploitation in the past.

Shahidul Mia (not his real name) spent about Tk 4 lakh to get employed in Saudi Arabia last year.

Although Bangladesh has seen a rise in overseas jobs over the years, in majority of the districts, international labour migration is quite low, largely due to lack of recruiting activities in those regions.

Over 1,500 passengers, who need a Covid-19 negative certificate six hours prior to flying to the UAE, start crowding the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport every day since morning.

The worrying dip in remittance flow in recent months is the result of a reemergence of illegal channels of money transfer after the coronavirus restrictions were lifted, a sharp decline in overseas recruitment, and layoffs, experts said.

Afroza Begum (not her real name) worked for three-and-a-half-years as a domestic help in Saudi Arabia.

Following a prolonged rough ride, driven by the pandemic, the country’s aviation sector is finally turning around as flight operations and the number of passengers flying from the Dhaka airport have almost tripled in three months. 

Sending migrant workers abroad continued to remain inadequate amid the pandemic compared to what the situation was during pre-pandemic times, which posed a challenge for the labour migration sector.

Mohiuddin Belal, an engineer based in UAE, heaved a sigh of relief on August 4 when he heard that his host country had lifted the flight ban from Bangladesh after about three months.

Mohammed Suman Miah died in Qatar on April 29, 2020 at the age of 34.

A visa embargo imposed by South Korea on Bangladesh for the last four months has left potential migrant workers wishing to work in the East Asian country under its Employment Permit System in limbo.

At least 3,437 Bangladeshis died in different parts of Saudi Arabia, where the Bangladesh consulate general in Jeddah has its jurisdictionbetween July 2019 and June 2021.

Mustakim Alam quit his job and came home from Kuwait amid the Covid-19 pandemic in May last year after living there for over seven years, working at a printing press.

The government’s decision to vaccinate migrant workers with Sinopharm jabs will not resolve the problem being faced by the Saudi Arabia-bound workers as the vaccine is not yet on the kingdom’s priority list, say recruiters.