Fake visas fail to wake up authorities

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Dubai-bound Bangladeshi jobseekers are being scammed with fake visas more than ever, but the authorities are yet to take any effective measure to remedy the situation.

This ill practice came to the forefront again on Monday when a total of 87 Bangladeshi jobseekers were deported from Dubai Airport as the immigration authorities found their visas to be fake.

“This sort of case is not new. Every week some workers are deported from Dubai for similar reasons,” said an immigration police officer at Zia International Airport. Only when a large number of workers are deported, it catches the attention of the media, he added.

Abdul Malek, director general of Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), said the United Arab Emirates (UAE) issues “photocopy visas” and the BMET does not have any way to verify the authenticity of the visas.

When a country, such as the UAE, issues photocopy visas to foreign workers, the workers will not have the original visa attached to their passports. Instead, they will receive photocopies or faxed copies of the original visas to present before the immigration authorities in the port of entry of that particular country.

When the workers arrive in Dubai and go through immigration process, their employers or their representatives come to the airport to receive the workers with their original visas.

“Our mission [Bangladesh Embassy] in Dubai cannot attest all the visas issued for our workers. Besides, the small number of officials cannot attest all of the approximately 30,000 visas issued a month,” said Abdul Malek.

Fraudsters are highly active to take advantage of this process and they are producing fake visas to cheat the jobseekers, said an immigration official.

Asked about the matter Didarul Haque, managing director of Heaven Overseas, that processed documents of six of the deported workers, said they only helped the workers get emigration clearance from BMET and that they were not involved in securing or buying visas of the workers.

In the cases of other countries, there are mechanisms that authenticity of visas could be checked on their websites, but no such mechanism is available for visas issued by the UAE, he said.

“The government should take up the issue immediately with UAE authorities. Otherwise, workers will continue to suffer and the travel agents that arrange the air tickets for the workers will also be affected, as they have to pay the cost of for the return ticket of the deported workers,” Didarul Haque said.

Preferring anonymity, another recruiting agent said workers may be deported also because the employers or their managers in Dubai do not accept the workers if they do not get the “payment” for the visas, which are sold against good amount of money.

Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Secretary Abdul Matin Chowdhury, however, believes that there are people in Bangladesh who prepare such fake visas and that they have links with the recruiting agents.

“We shall take actions against the recruiting agencies who processed the documents for the deported workers,” he said.

Asked if it was not government indifference about the fact that it has not taken up the issue with UAE authorities or have a mechanism to check the authenticity of the visas, the secretary said, “We have asked our mission in Dubai to talk to the authorities about it. They also tried, but they do not have enough access to UAE authorities.”

Abdul Matin Chowdhury, however, said Bangladesh signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with UAE and the joint committee formed under the MoU will soon discuss the issue in the UAE. There are also initiatives at diplomatic levels, he said.

Asked what will happen to the workers already deported, BMET DG Abdul Malek said, “We shall write letters to the 13 agencies involved to arrange jobs for the deported workers.”

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