IOM and the Government of Bangladesh today signed an agreement to provide Tk. 50,000 (USD 680) reintegration grants to some 36,500 Bangladeshi migrant workers forced to return home from Libya over the past four months.
The agreement, financed by a USD 40 million World Bank loan to Bangladesh signed in May, will also reimburse to IOM USD 12.6 million - the repatriation costs of 10,000 of the nearly 31,000 Bangladeshi workers that IOM flew home during the early days of the crisis, mainly from Tunisia and Egypt.
The agreement was signed in Dhaka today by Dr. Zafar Ahmed Khan, Secretary of the Bangladesh Ministry of Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment (MEWOE) and Ms. Rabab Fatima, IOM Regional Representative for South Asia, at a ceremony attended by MEWOE Minister Mosharraf Hossain and representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the World Bank.
Payment of the grants is expected to start in mid July and IOM will be responsible for establishing a database of all the returnees, verifying their documents and transferring the money to their banks, according to Ms Fatima.
"IOM is currently finalizing the database and will be initiating the verification and cash disbursement programme shortly. We will also launch a mass information campaign explaining the programme and set up a call centre to answer questions from applicants and arrange appointments," she added.
Since late February, over a million people, including over 280,000 migrant workers from various countries have been forced to flee the conflict in Libya. IOM has helped over 146,000 migrants to return home from neighbouring countries, notably to Bangladesh, Chad, Egypt, Ghana, Niger and Sudan.
For more information, please contact IOM Dhaka. Asif Munier, Email: amunier@iom.int - Tel: 01714114659, or Sonia Sarder, Email: ssarder@iom.int - Tel: +880.2.9889765