The Malé City Council, the capital’s municipality, is working to compile a register for expatriates residing in the city and its divisions, Mayor Shifa Mohamed has said.

Mayor Shifa, who previously served as minister at the Ministry of Education, said that the Malé City Council and the state’s Department of Immigration and Emigration are working together in this regard.

In a post on her Twitter account, sent out in Dhivehi, Shifa says ‘I have been part of discussions with the Immigration in order to compile a municipal register for expatriates. I believe the outlook of this initiative gaining traction and the Immigration working with the city council is very positive’.

The last national consensus made available publicly is one from 2014, and the number of expats living in the Maldives was just 63,637.

However, a US government report in 2016 said that the number of documented and undocumented workers in the Maldives could be as high as 200,000 – a little below half of Maldives’ total population.

Most undocumented workers in the Maldives, which has been labelled a destination country for forced labour and sex trafficking, have invalid or no travel documents or expired visas.

The US state department said last year expats in the Maldives ‘experience indicators of forced labor, including fraudulent recruitment, confiscation of identity and travel documents, withholding or non-payment of wages, and debt bondage’.