Rashidul Hasan

A parliamentary watchdog yesterday expressed extreme disappointment over the absence of DGHS Director General ABM Khurshid Alam in its meeting.

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.

Private hajj agencies and Biman Bangladesh Airlines will lose huge revenue for the second consecutive year as the Saudi government has decided not to allow anyone from abroad to perform hajj amid the pandemic.

Air travel within the country is going to get costlier as Padma Oil Company, the only source of jet fuel in the country, has once again increased the price of the fuel.

In yet another instance of female Bangladeshi expatriate workers enduring torture in a Middle East country, a 32-year-old woman returned home from Saudi Arabia with her six-month-old son.

Hefajat-e Islam will announce today its new committee comprising of what insiders said would be the leaders sympathetic to the ruling Awami League.

Aviation and tourism have been hit perhaps the hardest by the pandemic. Airlines went bankrupt and airliners were sent into early retirements or long storages. Flights got cancelled due to measures meant to contain the spread of the virus and planes that flew, flew nowhere near the full capacity.

Uncertainty over the return of around 25,000 Bangladeshi expatriates to work in Oman and Kuwait is over as Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh has lifted its restriction on travel to Oman, and Kuwait is allowing domestic workers to fly to that country.

Amid pressure from the expatriates’ welfare ministry, Biman Bangladesh Airlines yesterday agreed to look into reducing exorbitant airfares to various Middle Eastern destinations, currently a large financial burden for the country’s expatriate workers.

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.

Around 40,000 expatriate workers waiting to go to Saudi Arabia in the next one and a half months could have saved almost Tk 260 crore in hotel expenses had the government prioritised inoculating them against Covid-19.

After at least 1,000 migrants missed their flights to Saudi Arabia failing to book or pay for their mandatory quarantine in hotels, Bangladesh yesterday decided to help KSA-bound migrants with hotel bookings and subsidy.

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.

With the Saudi-bound Bangladeshi workers enduring immense sufferings following a travel advisory by the kingdom, officials at the expatriates’ welfare ministry yesterday said the ministry decided in principle to provide cash support to the migrant workers under financial strain.

Country Manager of airline operator Saudia in Bangladesh, Tarik A Alowaidi, yesterday asked all Saudia Arabia -bound Bangladeshi workers to book hotels for quarantine stays through the airline’s holiday website.

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.

The daily order of business of this year’s budget session will be carried out with minimum lawmakers in the House to maintain social distancing and avoid risk of Covid-19 infection, and the duration of the session will be brief.