Bringing in foreign labourers to be allowed after expat issue resolved: Minister Ihusan

Minister of Homeland Security and Technology Ali Ihusan has said that issuing permits to the public to bring in new labourers from Bangladesh will be recommenced only after the larger issues surrounding expatriate workers in the country are resolved.

After a four year ban on bringing in more workers from Bangladesh, the incumbent government allowed a number of labourers to be brought in under a special permit for the purposes of working on a high number of ongoing projects. However, permits to bring in Bangladeshi workers are still not being issued in general to the public, or to private companies.

Many businesses and companies have raised concerns about this, stating that they are unable to hire the required number of workers for their businesses.

The Minister and other relevant officials held a meeting this morning at Iskandhar Koshi with companies who hire expatriate workers.

At this meeting, the Minister said that efforts are currently ongoing to legalize undocumented expatriates currently in the country. Ihusan said no further permits to bring in expatriate workers will be issued until the issue at hand is resolved.

"We will open the borders to bring in more expatriates once we find ways for legalization of expatriates currently in the country and those efforts are successful," Ihusan said.

Ihusan highlighted that there are many companies that fail to make the due payments after they bring in expatriate workers. Failure to settle these payments result in the expatriates in question being considered as living illegally in the country. The Minister said that based on this, employers themselves are part of creating this problem.

To tackle this issue, the government had publicized a list of companies that have failed to settle these overdue payments. The Minister said that after this list was publicized, a large number of companies have now begun settling the dues. However, he said that just over 15 companies have settled all their dues as of now, and many still have pending payments to make.

The Minister expressed hopes of resolving the expatriate related issues within a period of three years. The first year would be focused on identifying and registering all expatriates, he said, efforts for which are currently being undertaken by the ministry.

The second phase would be to bring about the legalization of expatriates currently living against the law in Maldives. He said that the ministry would ensure all expatriates are accounted for, and registered with identification details such as fingerprints. They will also offer repatriation for expatriates who opt to voluntarily leave the country.

As per Immigration's Border Control System, there are currently 90,624 expatriates from Bangladesh in the Maldives. Expat System indicates that there are 139,000 active work permits issued, with only 36 percent of these having regularly made the payments in the past year.