Give migrants jabs with priority
A recruiting agencies' platform yesterday demanded that the government immediately arrange Covid-19 vaccines for migrant workers to ensure their smooth migration and save money spent on hotel quarantine.
Female Worker Recruiting Agencies Association of Bangladesh (FWRAAB) demanded that the government immediately import Johnson and Johnson or a similar kind of vaccine and initiate the inoculation process for migrant workers.
Moreover, they also wanted allocation of at least 50,000 doses of the recently imported Pfizer vaccine for migrant workers for emergency use.
The platform held a press conference at Dhaka Reporters' Unity in the capital to press home their demands.
Remittance sent by migrant workers is considered to be one of the main economic pillars of the country. More than one crore Bangladeshi migrant workers live in over 160 countries.
Last month, Saudi Arabia, the biggest job market for Bangladeshi migrant workers, in a travel advisory asked passengers from non-restricted countries, including Bangladesh, to be vaccinated to avoid a seven-day institutional quarantine in the kingdom.
Talking to this newspaper over phone, FWRAAB President Abdul Alim yesterday said at least 50,000 people with new work visas have been waiting to go abroad.
He said if not vaccinated, workers travelling to Saudi Arabia will have to spend about Tk 70,000 additionally to undergo hotel quarantine there. Such workers were already paying additional money to get plane tickets.
Although the government has agreed to pay Tk 25,000 of the quarantine fees as subsidy, migrant workers still have to pay the rest and high air fare, which is a burden for them, he added.
"Migrant workers should be given priority considering their contribution to the country's economy," Alim said.
FWRAAB Secretary General M Mohiuddin said they have raised the demand to ensure vaccination of both male and female, and new and old migrant workers.
The government has recently imported a little over one lakh jabs of the Pfizer vaccine, he said.
He said they want around 50,000 doses of those so that they can overcome the present crisis over migrant workers' travel abroad.
Mohiuddin said they have demanded Johnson and Johnson vaccine as experts suggest a person needs only one dose of the vaccine.
This will help migrant workers save both money and time, he added.
He added that at present they were mainly sending workers to Saudi Arabia as most other markets remained closed due to the pandemic.
Mohiuddin said although the government earlier allocated about 1.20 lakh shots of vaccine for migrant workers, those were later used for other sector.
Referring to hassles workers have to face to ensure hotel quarantine in Saudi Arabia, he said if the government starts vaccinating migrant workers, such situation would not happen.
According to an estimate of this newspaper, migrant workers travelling to Saudi Arabia could have saved at least Tk 260 crore in one and a half months from paying quarantine fees had the government prioritised inoculating them against Covid-19.
FWRAAB is a platform of about 600 recruiting agencies which send female workers to different countries.
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