Bangladesh ambassador to Kuwait Mostafa Reza Noor is pursuing the Kuwaiti authorities to regularise Bangladeshi workers with irregular status, and they listened to him positively, said a foreign ministry official.

Moreover, the foreign ministry discussed the issue with the Kuwaiti embassy in Dhaka.

"We are therefore expecting Kuwait to extend the amnesty period for Bangladeshi irregular workers or regularise them considering their plight following their return home, and the friendly relations between the two nations," the official told The Daily Star.

The workers will face dire distress if they return home at this stage, he said, hoping Kuwait would consider the issue on humanitarian grounds.

Several thousand Bangladeshi workers living in the oil-rich Arab state with irregular status fear that they have to return home voluntarily or face deportation on expiry of the amnesty period on June 30.

According to the amnesty declaration, if foreigners staying in Kuwait in violation of residency laws leave the county within the amnesty period, they will be exempted from any penalty or fine. The decree is not applicable to those who entered the country after its issuance, The Kuwait Times said.

"The violators who will not leave the state within the period will be subject to legal punishments as applicable under the law and will not be granted residencies. They will also be deported from the state and will never again be allowed to return," the newspaper reported.

Foreign ministry officials say there are around 5,000 Bangladeshi illegal workers in Kuwait but manpower recruiting agencies estimate the number is around 30,000.

Sources in the foreign ministry and expatriates' welfare and overseas employment ministry said workers become illegal due to various reasons including change of jobs for higher wages and for living there without renewing job contracts.

Manpower agencies point out that high cost of migration, low wages and decline of other facilities force many migrant workers in the Middle East countries including Kuwait to change jobs and become illegal.

In many cases employers also do not pay as per their commitments prompting workers to leave their jobs and join new ones leaving their passports with former legal employers.

Kuwait stopped hiring workers from Bangladesh in the last quarter of last year without showing any reason. Manpower agencies said a section of Bangladeshi workers there are involved in illegal visa trade, forging of work permits and even in immoral activities. All this might have prompted the Kuwaiti authorities to go for such a step.

Bangladesh sent 475,030 workers to Kuwait since 1976.