The country’s national flag carrier, Maldivian has revealed that over 9,000 expatriate workers residing in Maldives, have been repatriated through the airline thus far.

Speaking to RaajjeMV, Public Relations and Communications Manager of Maldivian, Moosa Waseem revealed that an additional group of 200 Bangladeshi nationals had been repatriated through the airline on Thursday, via a flight bound to Dhaka, Bangladesh.

With this, the total number of expatriate workers repatriated through Maldivian has risen to 9,033.

The repatriation exercise was prompted by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which affected thousands of Bangladeshi nationals residing in the island nation.

Following an announcement by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih during May, the government began efforts to evacuate volunteering expatriate workers from the Maldives as part of which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Economic Development collaboratively began an exercise.

The repatriation exercise is being carried out in collaboration with the foreign ministry and the Bangladeshi High Commission in the Maldives, with the assistance from the Bangladeshi government.

Fayyaz Ismail, the Minister of Economic Development had earlier 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.

The economic ministry has since revealed that over 15,000 undocumented workers had been sent back home by the second week of November.

The authorities began battling the global pandemic at a time the issue of undocumented Bangladeshi nationals living illegally in the Maldives had been a rising concern.

Maldives Immigration earlier revealed that more than 60,000 undocumented workers are residing illegally in the Maldives without valid documentations and/or passports, out of the 144,607 expatriate worker community in the country.