Recruiters now pay no extra charges for Saudi work visa

Bangladeshi labour recruiting agencies no longer pay the extra $220-$250 "unofficially" through middlemen against each application for work visa at the Saudi Embassy in Dhaka.

Recruiters said they are no longer forced to pay extra after The Business Standard ran a report on 25 July with the headline "Saudi-bound workers forced to pay $220 extra per visa".

The report mentioned that migration costs had gone up by at least Tk20,000 in recent months as recruiting agencies were charging extra on the pretext of other expenditure on getting work visas issued by the embassy in Dhaka.

The recruiting agents alleged that if they did not pay the extra through middlemen, the embassy did not issue visas.

"However, the situation has changed in the last few weeks. Now workers have been getting the benefit without paying extra cost," an agency owner and former leader of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (Baira) told TBS.

Another recruiter said a syndicate played a role in realising this extra amount which had stopped for the moment.

The recruiting agencies have claimed that the secret payment has been going on for about a year.

To get a work visa issued, recruiting agencies have to pay the brokers in US dollars directly, they said, adding that this additional expenditure ultimately is passed on to the workers, pushing their migration cost which is already much higher than the official rate amid widespread illegal transactions to pay for work visas.

The government-fixed immigration cost to go to Saudi Arabia is Tk1.65 lakh, but a Saudi-bound worker has to spend Tk3.5-4 lakh for the purpose.

Earlier, the Saudi Embassy told TBS that there were no fees or charges associated with applying for a visa at the embassy.