From the total 139,000 work permits issued through the expat system, only 36 percent were regularly paying the permit fees, said Minister of Homeland Security, Ali Ihusan.
The minister's statements had come following public criticism to the government for its decision on Sunday, December 17, to revoke the restriction on hiring Bangladeshi expatriates to the Maldives' workforce after a four-year period.
Former Minister of Economic Development Fayyaz Ismail viewed the decision as unlawful. He added that the government cannot revoke the ban owing to the relevant law stipulating a limitation of expatriates from each country.
While the law stipulates that the maximum number of expatriates allowed per country is 100,000, the minister said that the total capacity of Bangladeshi expats have not exceeded this limit during a recent press conference.
At the impromptu press conference held to address the issue on Monday evening, December 18, the minister said that the total number of Bangladeshi nationals residing in the Maldives can be monitored via the border control system of Maldives Immigration, and added that it showed the presence of exactly 90,624 expats from the country. Ihusan added that this was not a violation according to Section 65 of the Employment Act.
While the previous government counted expatriates based on the number of active work permits from the expat system, the current government calculates the workforce total based on the number of expats present in the Maldives as reflected by the border control system, which is the government's central system to monitor all expat movements in the country.
Minister Ihusan reiterated that the expat system showed the number of active work permits, but not the exact amount of foreigners in the Maldives.
"Active work permit relates to the access granted to foreigners to arrive and reside in the Maldives for work, which would remain active unless the employer does not cancel the permit. Meaning, the requests made from companies seeking expatriates is what we call work permit," the minister said.
The minister further highlighted that work permits are cancelled upon the request of the employer after the expatriate leaves for their home country. He added that despite thousands of expatriates now residing elsewhere, their permits would be active unless a request to cancel them has not been lodged with the relevant authority; after which the information is verified against the border control system for clarity.
"Out of the total work permits, only 50 percent [of employers] regularly paid for the permits of their Bangladeshi employees, while overall, only 36 percent [of employers] paid for the permits," the minister said, highlighting the low number of employers making consistent payments for expat workers.
The minister highlighted that several of these active work permits belonged to expatriates who no longer resided in the Maldives, and notified a special investigation has been launched to identify and tally the number of expatriates reflected on the expat system. He assured to run biometric analysis to identify which of the expats on the system still resided in the Maldives, and announced the initiative would be completed in the upcoming one-year period.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Economic Development's decision to delete some reports pertaining to the statistics of expatriate workers published by the previous government has become public knowledge and the subject of scrutiny as well.
In response, Minister Ihusan said that he has not received any reports of redacted information and assured that the reports deleted from the Economic Ministry's website would be republished on the Homeland Security Ministry's website.
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