Migrants’ rights activists on Monday urged the authorities to help make visa appointments immediately as a huge number of visa applicants, aspiring to migrate to Italy, did not get the appointments even after several months.
The aspirants, mostly for work in the European country, said that they submitted applications for Italian visas several months ago and were yet to get any response from the embassy.
The embassy has neither set appointments nor returned their passports they added.
Three organisations of migrants—Bangladesh Migration Development Forum, Italbangla Samannay Unnayan Parishad and Bangladesh Migration Development Association organised the event at Dhaka Reporters Unity in the capital.
Organisers said that Italy visa aspirants had been suffering for the past one year. Bangladesh Migration Development Association executive director Shah Mohammad Tayefur Rahman said that there was a stack of some 1,10,000 visa applications at the embassy. ‘If the Italy embassy don’t take prompt action to issue visas with an additional manpower, it will take two to three more years,’ he said.
He said that many aspirants who applied for visas six months ago did not get any slot yet today.
‘Visa aspirants are living in uncertainty,’ he said.
He said that if the visa appointment process did not resume by October 20, the aspirant migrants would took to the streets again.
He also demanded the government to take diplomatic measures to resolve the issue.
Md Mohiuddin Ahmed said that he had been waiting for an appointment for the past eight months and had visited the VFS Global office, a third party visa process on behalf of the Italian embassy, at least seven times to get updates. Each time, they failed to provide any satisfactory answer.
BMDF president Khairuzzaman Kamal, general secretary Shamsun Nahar Aziz Nina, joint general secretary Joynal Abedin Joy and member Mohammand Alai and Shah Abiur Rahman, among others, were present.
On September 9, several hundred people aspiring to migrate to Italy on Monday staged a demonstration in the capital’s Gulshan area urging the Italian embassy in Dhaka to return their passports with Italian visas immediately.
On October 8, the foreign adviser Md Touhid Hossain said that Italy assured Bangladesh that it would clear 20,000 pending visa applications for Bangladeshi nationals by December.
The adviser shared the updates with reporters following a meeting with a delegation of Italian visa seekers at the foreign ministry.
