The Maldives government announced its decision to cover for the expenses incurred in sending off expatriate workers without validated work visa or travel documents.
Maldives State’s decision was confirmed from the mandated authority in expat regulation and monitoring; the Ministry of Economic Development.
According to Ministry of Economic Development, the authority is responsible in acquiring or extracting all necessary documents from the respective high-commissions or embassies for the expat workers to ease in their send-off.
The ministry further advised expatriates, without proper work visas or travel documents to forward their passport number or any verified identification number to the ministry’s number at +960 7205648.
Ministry of Economic Development reported, they will be handling all the processions once they receive the required information from any expatriate.
Maldives reports over thousands of expatriates while many of them originate from neighboring Bangladesh; who take up a significant portion of support and labor level jobs in the country.
Furthermore, expatriate workers; especially from Bangladesh, take up more than 80% of the construction labor force in the island nation as well.
The Maldives government’s decision has come amid the COVID-19 viral outbreak, which has been rapidly spreading across the world.
Maldives had reported the presence of a total of 13 positive cases out of which 03 have since recovered; while 10 remains in treatment.
Earlier, Maldives state announced on its steps to reduce the economic damage to the island nation which has come majorly due to the viral outbreak.
The global pandemic placed a massive dent on Maldivian economy; as arrival numbers dwindled significantly in light of travel and arrival restrictions on several countries.
Meanwhile, several expense-reduction measures have been placed by Maldives government which includes slicing down on salaries of the state executives; including President and Vice President’s salaries as well as cabinet ministers and Maldives parliament members.
More on the matter, Maldives government during a previous press conference detailed public employees with salaries of MVR30,000 or above will have a 20% reduction on their remuneration.
Similarly, the senior executive members and management of Maldives Ports Limited had effectively sliced the salaries as well.
The decision to send-off unregulated expatriate workers may be Maldives government’s efforts to reduce on outside money transactions and to control foreign currency within the island nation at a time when the country’s economy has been speculated to hit a recession.