BD workers in Greece face difficulties to be documented

Reza Mahmud :
Undocumented Bangladeshi workers in Greece face new crisis as the European country announced several conditions to be legalised.
The Greece government recently asked applications from undocumented foreign workers to be submitted within six months.
But they imposed several conditions including staying and working in the country for nine months.
Meanwhile, MoU signed between Bangladesh and Greece allowed the migrant workers to stay and work there for five years.
As per the agreement, those documented Bangladeshi migrant workers can have renewed their visas after visiting their home country after five years.
Afterwards, the authority is still conducting raids and detaining the undocumented workers and keeping them in the camps which made them vulnerable.
As per the migrant Bangladeshi workers in the country, the camps are totally unhealthy and very difficult to live for human beings.
The detained migrant workers are crying for their release from the camps urgently.
On the other hand, the detainees also are facing hardship to submit the application for being documented.
Vasilis Kerassiotis, a lawyer specializing in human rights and immigration in Greece told Media that the government’s initiative would give the illegal migrant workers to be legal by submitting applications.
As per the new announcement, the documented migrants can get the opportunity to stay and work there for nine months, Vasilis said.
Besides, the newly started raid made thing more difficult for illegal workers submitting the applications.
“Whenever we started going to offices concerned for taking receiving the applications, the police detained us. In these circumstances, we are unable to submit the applications,” said Ahsan Ahmed, one of the undocumented workers living in Athens, the capital city of the country.
On the other hand, the detained undocumented workers are also in uncertainty over submitting applications in time.
Vasilis Kerassiotis said in this regards, that the detained migrant workers may get more time after being released from camps for submitting their applications.
The undocumented Bangladeshi workers are seeking the government’s help to be legalised
as per the MoU signed between the two countries.
When contacted, Imran Ahmed, Minister of the Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment told The New Nation, “We must contact with the Athens government in this regards.”
The Minister, however, said, the migrant workers should follow the rules of the country. “They should be sincere enough so that the rules and laws of the country can favour them to be documented,” he said.
Sources said, several thousand Bangladeshi workers are working in Greece while about 2000 of them have become undocumented.