The Bangladesh government has so far disbursed around $16.5 million to returnee migrant workers as part of the $82 million rehabilitation package, reported the Daily Star.

Addressing an international conference on the reintegration of returnee migrant workers, Imran Ahmad, Bangladesh’s minister for expatriates, informed that around 428,000 workers returned to Bangladesh last year.

The government is working on the reintegration of these workers by providing cheap loans through the Prabashi Kalyan Bank. Earlier, in the second half of 2020, only $1.4 million was disbursed among workers under the package.

However, in the first quarter of 2021, the amount reached $16 million. The minister hoped that by June this year, the government would be able to disburse around $23.5 million.

Highlighting the efforts taken by the government to address the challenge, he said around 1.44 lakh people have already gone abroad for work in the first three months of 2021. Till March, he claimed, the government received around $18.4 billion in remittances in the current financial year, crossing the earning of the last fiscal which was $18.2 billion.

Oversees migrant workers, and the remittances the country receives through them, form a crucial segment of Bangladesh’s economy. Over the years, Bangladesh has taken several steps to diversify its overseas labor markets.

According to a report by the Economic Intelligence Unit, the country earned record remittances, around $24 billion, in 2020.