They offered amnesty for two months from Dec 4 for the expatriates
whose visas expired, allowing them either to regularise their papers or leave
the country without paying a penalty.
“It’s a central procedure right now
and the process is being finalised,” Sheikha Lubna Bint Khaled Al Qasimi told
reporters after a meeting with Foreign Minister Dipu Moni at the state
guesthouse, Padma.
She said the visa restrictions were not particular to
Bangladesh. “This is actually covering several aspects of labourers of different
nationalities.”
The UAE enforced a temporary halt in October on issuing
visas to Bangladeshis raising ‘security concerns over identification and fake
documents.’
The Gulf nation hosts about 1 million Bangladeshi workers,
the second highest after Saudi Arabia, and has been an uninterrupted labour
market for foreign remittance-dependent Bangladesh, despite the recent global
economic recession.
The Foreign Minister said during their meeting they
also discussed the visa issue along with other bilateral issues including UAE’s
investment opportunities.
“We hoped and we discussed that once the
amnesty period is over, normalcy will resume,” she said.
A five-member
UAE delegation led by the Minister for Foreign Trade arrived in Dhaka earlier in
the day with their investment plans in different sectors including energy and
power, infrastructure, agriculture and IT.
Dipu Moni said they were
exploring ways as to how and in which sectors they will invest.
“We’ve
many opportunities for so many projects here. It’s an open avenue,” the UAE
minister said.
She said their talks covered all the aspects of bilateral
trade and investment and both of them agreed on a joint economic committee to
strengthen the trade ties.
“We’ll work on increasing collaboration
between Bangladesh and the UAE,” she said, replying to questions.
Qasimi,
however, did not specify whether they have any specific proposal on investment
in building a deep-sea port as proposed earlier.
