Several hundred people aspiring to migrate to Italy on Monday staged a demonstration in the capital鈥檚 Gulshan area urging the Italian embassy in Dhaka to return their passports with Italian visas immediately.
The aspirants, mostly for work in the European country, said that they had submitted applications for Italian visas several months ago and were yet to get any response from the embassy.
Witnesses said that the demonstrators gathered at Justice Shahabuddin Park and tried to march towards the Italian embassy in Dhaka to press home their demand.
The members of law enforcement agencies, however, obstructed the protesters when they tried to come out of the park to stage a demonstration in front of the Italian embassy in the city.
The demonstrators said that about 40,000 passports of Bangladesh nationals with necessary documents were so far submitted to the embassy seeking visas but the embassy neither issued visas nor returned their passports by denying visas.
According to the announcement of the embassy, they take 90 days to issue a visa if the supplied documents support the applicant.
Imran Hasan, who came from Madaripur, said that he applied for a work visa in November 2023 as he was planning to migrate to Italy as a seasonal agricultural worker in February 2024.
鈥業 did not get any response from the embassy until now,鈥� he said.
He said that he collected money at a high interest from a local broker to migrate to the European country.
Hours after the demonstration that ended at about noon, the Italian embassy in a statement said that a few representatives of the visa applicants met the deputy head of the mission.
The embassy mentioned legal, technical, and logistic reasons for the delay in issuing work visas.
The embassy also warned the visa applicants not to trust any mediators who were the main reason for the delay.
The embassy also asked the applicants not to provide fake information and assured them of its commitment to increase the output of processed applications.