The Ministry of Economic Development has called individuals and businesses to submit ‘Missing Persons Requests’ for unaccounted foreign workers, in order to regulate the presence of expatriates in the Maldives.
The Ministry made the request as per provisions detailed under Article 33 of the Regulation on Employing Expatriates in the Maldives, which stipulates that employers must notify the Ministry in the event that an expatriate goes missing and cannot be accounted for.
Furthermore, the Ministry revealed that employers of foreign workers would have between 15th February and 14th March to update the expat system with information on those workers who had been reported as missing or unaccounted for, in the event that they were previously undocumented in the registry.
Economic Minister Fayyaz Ismail recently detailed that the Ministry aimed to repatriate 20,000 foreigners working illegally in the Maldives in 2021. As of now, over 7,000 undocumented foreign workers in the Maldives have been repatriated to Bangladesh, in addition to 8,000 fully documented workers who expressed independent wishes to return to their native countries.
