The decision taken by a number of Gulf nations to send back a sizeable number of Bangladeshi migrant workers is set to inflict yet another blow to the country's economy that under the influence of the corona pandemic has gone into tailspin. There are quite a few downsides of this forced repatriation. Firstly, the country will be deprived of the flow of a sizeable volume of remittances; secondly, the government will be required to spend some amount of money on getting back the migrant workers back home; and thirdly, all the returnees will have to be placed under institutional quarantine for safety reasons.
According to media reports, Bangladesh is not the only country to be affected by the decision to send back migrant workers most of whom are undocumented or serving prison sentences. The relevant employing countries have reportedly taken a tough stance on the repatriation issue. They have threatened to scrap the memoranda of understanding on recruitment if the countries concerned fail to take back their nationals immediately. Bangladesh, however, has managed to persuade a number of employing countries to agree to its proposal to take back the migrant workers -- the exact number of such workers, according to unofficial sources, is quite large -- in phases in view of the prevailing difficult situation.
All the workers to be sent back by different employing countries, on arrival, will have to be placed under institutional quarantine, but the authorities may be hard put to accommodate them if they arrive at a time. So, their phased arrival will make things rather easy for the receiving authorities. There is no denying that an indifferent attitude on the part of a number of government agencies in the matters of health-safety checks at the airports and quarantining the migrant workers who arrived during the initial period of Covid-19 outbreak has contributed to the spread of the disease across the country.
Hopefully, the agencies concerned will not commit the same mistakes again. Any deviation will only worsen the situation. This time the Bangladesh Army, reportedly, is in close liaison with the relevant ministry in the matters of post-arrival formalities and quarantining the repatriated workers. This is expected to make a difference.
The Ministry of Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment, it seems, is going to do some justice to its name as it has decided to extend financial help in different forms to thousands of workers who will be returning home under difficult situation. In addition to making available some financial help to the families of workers who died of Covid-19, it will offer cash handout of Tk 5000 and loans up to Tk 0.7 million to each of the returnees. The money, obviously, will come from the expatriate welfare fund, created long ago by the government.
The Gulf nations, it is expected, would compensate, at an appropriate time, for the loss that Bangladesh will sustain in view of taking back its workers, illegal or otherwise, in compliance with their decision. As most nations across the world, the oil-rich nations in the Middle East are also hard hit, economically, by the coronavirus pandemic. But when the situation eases, they too will be engaged in the task of economic recovery. It is most likely they would need foreign workers in the economic reconstruction work. Bangladeshi workers should not be left out then.