Maldives Immigration Department on February 21 said that there are over 60,000 people working in the country ‘illegally’, reports RaajjeMV. Speaking at a press conference on February 21 morning, Controller General Mohamed Ahmed Hussain said that while there is a total of 144,607 expatriate workers in the Maldives, that 63,000 are undocumented. He said that a special programme was launched ‘to minimize the undocumented migrants’ on January 2. ‘Operation Stingray’ is to be carried for a one-year period. Noting that arresting and imprisoning the undocumented workers ‘is not the best solution,’ the controller general said that the public’s cooperation is required to control the issue. He said that expat quotas have been issued in violation of the country’s laws and regulations in the past, and called on all to refrain from doing so.
Furthermore, noting that a number of expatriate workers have been deported in the past, the controller general said that 513 were deported in 2018 as they were ‘unfit’ to work in the Maldives while 112 were deported on criminal allegations. This is 80 more compared to 2017.