Jamil Mahmud

Migrant worker Shahidul Islam, 38, returned home in January this year after injuring his right leg in a workplace accident while employed as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh.

The government has decided to pay up to Tk 25,000 for each Bangladeshi worker’s stay in hotel in Saudi Arabia for their seven-day on-arrival institutional quarantine.

The government is going to make informal grassroots service providers in labour migration accountable by formally recognising them under the relevant law with the aim to end fraudulence in the sector.

Bangladeshi migrants trying to go to Saudi Arabia have found themselves in more trouble as airlines are now saying that hotel bookings for the seven-day on-arrival institutional quarantine must be done by passengers.

A mob looted and vandalised around 50 shops and malls owned by Bangladeshis in Brandfort of Free State province in South Africa on Tuesday.

Around 10,000 Bangladeshis in South Africa are now living in fear after several hundred shops of expatriates were vandalised, torched, and looted by mobs in Free State’s Bloemfontein last week.

Bangladeshis are facing huge obstacles to joining work in Saudi Arabia following a travel advisory from the Middle Eastern country. The expatriates’ welfare ministry has not yet taken any visible steps to address their issues.

Several thousand Saudi-bound Bangladeshi migrant workers have been struggling due to the new travel advisory given by Saudi Arabia, which requires medical insurance, covering the risk of Covid-19 infections and hotel reservations for institutional quarantine.

With a two-year job “contract” and dreams of a better life, Akhi Begum (not her real name) left for Saudi Arabia in mid-2019.

Migrant worker Nazim Uddin returned home from Saudi Arabia in May last year amid the Covid-19 pandemic. His residence permit expired after a few months, meaning he could not return to the Gulf country.

The government’s decision to suspend all international flights for a week from Wednesday onwards to contain the spread of Covid-19 has put aspiring migrant workers in a perplexing situation.

In the space of two years, Rubel Miah has seen the value of his wages at his job in Beirut plummet to one-fifth of what he could earlier convert to US dollars and send home to his family.

Bangladeshi migrant workers who returned home from Libya on Wednesday went through severe hardship as their livelihoods were hampered due to economic uncertainty and deterioration of law and order.

Mehedi Hasan took his weak and elderly mother to the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University vaccination centre around noon yesterday.

Only the 10th and 12th graders have to attend classes in person every day while other secondary school and college students may visit their classrooms once a week when their educational institutions reopen during the pandemic.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday inaugurated the handing-over of houses to some 66,189 beneficiary families all over the country via a video conferencing from the Gono Bhaban.

Asia Begum’s beaming face reflected her cherished dream of living in her own house, which may become a reality as the government pledged to provide land and houses to homeless and landless people to mark Mujib Borsho.

An estimated 30,000 undocumented Bangladeshi migrant workers became regularised in Bahrain under an amnesty programme of the Gulf country’s government that ended on December 31 last year.

The coronavirus pandemic that brought global human mobility to a near standstill for most of last year hit the country’s vast labour migration sector hard.

The government is considering bringing informal grassroots service providers into the labour migration sector under a framework to tackle fraudulence.