Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid has said that 70 Bangladeshi nationals in the Maldives who are not properly registered are to be repatriated back to Bangladesh.
In a tweet, Minister Shahid stated that the discussions with the government of Bangladesh had achieved a solution where the Bangladeshi nationals would be repatriated on a military aircraft of the country that is set to arrive in the Maldives tomorrow.
The flight will be carrying Maldivian students in Bangladesh and Nepal. Minister Shahid thanked his Bangladeshi counterpart for the arrangements.
Minister Shahid stated that the work to repatriate more undocumented migrants would be conducted. Maldives Immigration has previously estimated that the country has around 200,000 migrant workers. Out of that, Immigration estimated that 63,000 people were undocumented. Under the government’s regularization program, around 31,000 migrants had registered.
The Human Rights Watch has previously stated that the living conditions of many such migrant workers were in a state so dire that if the Covid-19 virus were to spread in the country, the migrant worker population would be the worst affected.
Out of the confirmed virus cases in the Maldives, 15 are migrants.