5,000 Bangladeshis apply for passports
Around 80% of those seeking amnesty want 6-month visa to find a job in UAE, envoy says
Most Bangladeshi amnesty-seekers want to stay in the UAE and around 5,000 have applied for new passports as of August 31, a top Bangladeshi diplomat told Gulf News on Monday. Bangladeshi missions will issue the first batch of passports next week.
“They have applied for new passports to apply for the sixmonth visa [for job search] or employment visa [for those who got new jobs]. As it takes four to six weeks to issue passports from Dhaka [capital of Bangladesh], those who applied in early August [around 200] will get their passports next week,” said Mohammad Imran, the Bangladeshi Ambassador to the UAE.
The list of passports to be delivered next week will be published soon on the websites of the embassy in Abu Dhabi (www.bdembassy.ae.org) and the Consulate General in Dubai (http://cgbdubai.org).
“We will share the list with Bangladeshi community organisations,” the envoy said.
He urged applicants to check the status with the missions four weeks after applying.
Imran said, as around 80 per cent of Bangladeshi amnesty-seekers want to stay in ■ the UAE, there are more applicants for passports than for emergency certificates (EC), which are issued to those who want to return home, but do not have a valid passport.
The missions have already issued around 1,200 ECs as of August 31 (around 700 in Dubai and 500 in Abu Dhabi). The embassy estimates that around 100 people have already left the UAE and others are continuing their procedures at the amnesty centres. An EC issued by the embassy is valid for three months.
If amnesty-seekers have to apply for a visa to continue living in the UAE, they must first have a valid passport.
Of around 5,000 passport applicants (around 3,000 in Dubai and 2,000 in Abu Dhabi), half are absconders whose passports were held by their sponsors and others have expired/lost passports. “We expect another 5,000 passport applicants during the amnesty period,” he said.
Although the embassy received a few hundred passports from UAE authorities, most of them had expired, Imran added.
Amnesty centre officials confirmed that a majority of amnesty-seekers are Bangladeshis. Around 25,000 Bangladeshis availed of the previous UAE amnesty in 2012-13.
A large number of Bangladeshi expatriates hail from Chittagong area in the country and the same is the case with amnesty-seekers also, according to community leaders.
of the applicants are expected to get new passports next week
emergency certificates issued to Bangladeshi expats as of August 31