A total of 164 Bangladeshi migrants, including nine who escaped a massacre of foreign workers in Libya, have returned home, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Bangladesh office said on Saturday.
Aboard a voluntary humanitarian flight from Libya, they arrived at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shajalal International Airport on Wednesday.
Among the returnees were nine survivors of the tragic Mizdah incident in Libya, in which 30 migrants, including 26 from Bangladesh, were shot and killed in a smuggling warehouse, in May.
“I can’t forget the incident; it was like living a nightmare. I was shot and it took me four months to recover enough to make the journey home,” Syed Khan, one of the Midzah survivors, said in his account of the incident.
Some of them, he pointed out, still have not fully recovered and “we are still traumatised”. He, however, expressed his gratitude to the IOM and the government of Bangladesh for medical and other supports to them in Libya and for arranging the flight home.
Thirty nine of 100 vulnerable migrants, who were on the flight, have reported ‘medical conditions’, according to the IOM news release.
IOM medical escorts travelled with the migrants and upon arrival, health teams were on the site to coordinate healthcare for migrants who will quarantine at the government facilities, provide referral support to specialised services, and provide follow-up support to migrants with chronic conditions.
Eligible migrants will receive reintegration support once they complete their government-mandated quarantine period, said the release, adding that follow-up care is particularly important for migrants who experienced physical and psychological trauma while stranded in Libya.
The deadly attack in Mizdah, near the city of Gharyan, southwest of Tripoli, also left 11 other migrants critically injured and the IOM and its partners had supported the survivors in the subsequent months.
Survivor Syed will now receive medical and psychosocial follow-up support in Dhaka, and financial assistance to start a business so that he can run his family.
Giorgi Gigauri, IOM Bangladesh’s Chief of Mission, said that the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated vulnerabilities of migrant workers across the world, and they are working to overcome movement and other restrictions to access vulnerable migrants who are stranded and in need of support.
“We are working closely with the government, in particular the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment, to ensure migrants’ access to health services, shelter, food, consular services, and for the most vulnerable - flights home,” he added.
As most migrants return to Bangladesh through Hazrat Shahjalal Airport, the country’s busiest airport, the IOM in coordination with the government’s Communicable Disease Control (CDC) has been working there since March, to build the capacity of point of entry (POE) staff to identify, screen, and refer travellers with Covid-19 symptoms.
Since April, more than 165,000 Bangladeshi migrants, mostly victims of job cut in the destination countries, returned home.
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