The government has made an initiative to build a dormitory for migrant workers in Dhaka city, according to officials concerned.
The workers who have no suitable living place in the capital to stay for a short time while they are going abroad or returning home.
The dormitory will address the migrants' accommodation crisis, said the officials at Wage Earners' Welfare Board (WEWB).
The board will start the procedure by this year to set up a dormitory as soon as possible.
To this effect, they are looking for land close to Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
The structure will be built somewhere near the airport to ensure easy communication with the workers.
Both male and female workers will get the living facility, the officials mentioned.
Outbound or returned migrant workers, especially women migrants, sometimes face a severe accommodation crisis when they come to the city from village.
They face same difficulties when they return home from abroad. Many of them need to stay for some days in the city, but they have no accommodation facilities.
Considering this acute problem of workers, a move has been made to set up a dormitory in Dhaka, WEWB director general Hamidur Rahman told a programme recently.
Apart from the facility, the board will undertake more projects to ensure facilities for workers, he said.
However, the WEWB maintains a welfare fund for expatriate Bangladeshi workers.
The fund was established with contributions from migrant workers who pay Tk 3,500 as welfare fee while getting immigration clearances.
Workers get multiple benefits from the board like financial grant of Tk 300,000 to the families of dead migrant workers.
Ailing workers get Tk 100,000 each for treatment.
The welfare board has also a stipend programme for meritorious children of migrant workers.
Every year, an estimated 700,000 Bangladeshi migrants go abroad with jobs.
More than 12-million Bangladeshis have gone abroad since 1976, according to the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training.
Most of them are staying in the Middle-Eastern countries, it stated.
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