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Bangladeshi workers in Oman request amnesty to return home

October 4, 2016 at 12:46 pm

A senior official from the Bangladeshi embassy in Muscat has urged the Omani government to provide an amnesty for stranded foreign workers.

Workers are trapped between staying in the country illegally after their visas have expired and paying fines of thousands of riyals if they were to turn themselves into the Omani authorities to get sent back to their home countries.

An investigation conducted by Times of Oman showed that there are thousands of migrants who have been left without work after they arrived in the country.

Those whose visas have expired cannot afford to eat, let alone pay fines. The longer they stay in Oman, the higher their fines, making returning to their home countries without an amnesty impossible.

“Daily, from 5am, we wait on the street till 11am hoping that we may get a job. Nobody is coming nowadays. Without money, food and medicines are a big problem now,” one worker told the newspaper.