Leading destination management company and travel agent, Ace Travels has repatriated over 900 expatriate workers from the Maldives.

This was revealed by the Managing Director of the company, Mohamed Firaq via a Twitter post, which reads that a total of 935 Bangladeshi nationals residing in Malé City have been repatriated in collaboration with the Maldives Immigration.

The repatriation was carried out within the past 10 days, via five flights from the SriLankan Airlines.

The government has been repatriating Bangladeshi workers through an exercise launched after an announcement by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih during May, after hundreds of Bangladeshi nationals began testing positive for the global Covid-19 pandemic, since the community transmission was discovered in the Maldives capital region on April 15 and a lockdown was imposed consecutively.

The Minister of Economic Development and acting Tourism Minister Fayyaz Ismail earlier revealed that the government aims to send back about 20,000 undocumented workers prior to the end of the ongoing year.

Over 4,000 undocumented workers have already been sent back home by now.

The Economic Ministry launched a “Voluntary Repatriation” programme in cooperation with the Bangladeshi government, to evacuate the thousands of undocumented expatriate workers residing illegally in the country this month, under which over 200 Bangladeshis have registered to return home.

However, expatriates will not be repatriated without their consent, under the programme.

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 documents.