Under the government’s repatriation exercise for Bangladeshi nationals residing in the Maldives, 200 more have been evacuated from the country on Saturday.

The country’s national airline, Maldivian evacuated the group via a flight bound to Dhaka, on Saturday afternoon.

The government began the repatriation exercise after an announcement by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih during May. The president made the announcement, after hundreds of Bangladeshi nationals tested positive Covid-19.

The majority of cases reported in the Maldives have been among Bangladeshi's, who were found to be vulnerable to the disease due to poor and unsanitary living conditions.

Earlier, the Economic Minister Fayyaz Ismail stated that the government aims to send back at least 20,000 undocumented workers prior to the end of the ongoing year. Fayyaz noted that expatriate workers will not be send back home, without their consent.

As such, over 3,900 undocumented workers have already been sent back home by now and the ministry aims to repatriate between 15,000 to 20,000 workers by year-end.

The work is being carried out in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Bangladeshi High Commission in the Maldives, with the assistance from the Bangladeshi government.

In addition, the state is to begin imposing fines on expatriate workers residing in the nation without proper documentation such as the employer visa from next week onwards. A procedure for penalizing the expats will be publicized.

The Immigration office has revealed that out of the 200,000 expatriate workers residing in the Maldives, nearly 60,000 are undocumented workers living illegally without valid visas and/or passports.