Bangladeshis stuck in Vietnam returning

Around 105 Bangladeshi migrants, who faced exploitation in Vietnam, are finally flying home tomorrow in a chartered flight arranged by the Bangladesh government.

"They will be flying in in a US-Bangla chartered flight on August 18," Bangladesh Ambassador to Vietnam, Samina Naz, told The Daily Star yesterday.

Apart from migrants, eight Bangladeshi businessmen and tourists would also come home around 4:00pm Tuesday, she said by phone.

Officials concerned at the foreign and expatriates' welfare ministries said the Bangladeshis had been stranded there for weeks and were desperate to return home.

"For now, the government is paying their airfare. The recruiting agencies that sent the jobseekers to Vietnam will reimburse the money later," an official at the expatriates' welfare and overseas employment ministry told The Daily Star.

Several groups of Bangladeshis travelled from Ho Chi Min City to Vietnam's capital Hanoi since early July and protested the exploitation against their Vietnamese employers and Bangladeshi brokers. They demanded immediate repatriation.

However, as international flights have been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, there was no way to repatriate them immediately, officials said.

Bangladesh embassy in Hanoi in cooperation with Vietnam police accommodated nearly 100 of them in several hotels. Later, on August 4, the embassy issued a circular that other Bangladeshis who went to Vietnam for jobs, had cards issued by the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) and were willing to return home could register.

Following that, some other Bangladeshis registered with the Bangladesh embassy for returning home. Eventually, the embassy charted the US-Bangla flight for sending them home.

Shital Chandra Sarker, one of the defrauded Bangladeshis in Vietnam, said they were grateful to the Bangladesh embassy in Hanoi for arranging their repatriation.

"We had to pay Tk 4 to 5 lakh to come here, but the agents exploited us. They did not provide us with proper jobs or salaries. We were extremely vulnerable in that situation," he told The Daily Star by phone yesterday.

"It's a great relief for us that we can finally return home," Shital said.