As many as 12,000 Bangladeshi workers have returned home from Malaysia following various forms of exploitations and cheating by Malaysian employers or manpower brokers since January this year.

Only yesterday (August 2) morning, 27 workers who were kept at different Malaysian jails because of their having no work permit returned home by a Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight, said an immigration official at Zia International Airport.

On Friday (July 31), the number of returnees from Malaysia was 41, he said adding, 'Thirty to fifty workers regularly return home from Malaysia on special travel passes.' He said such passes are issued for those who become illegal.

The return on such a scale is a recent phenomenon, which is a result of hiring surplus workers by Malaysian employers in the last three years, officials at the ministry of expatriates' welfare and overseas employment said.

Last year, only around 1,000 Bangladeshi workers who became irregular either for overstaying or having no work permits returned home.

'Only in the last seven months, over 12,000 workers returned home. This is because employers hired surplus workers, but finally did not issue work permits against them. So, they are identified as illegal workers. Many of them were also put to jails,' said an official at the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training.

Requesting anonymity, the official said there are also many workers who were not fit by medical test in Malaysia. If workers are not medically fit, they are not issued work permits, he noted.

The official said there might also be some Bangladeshis who went to Malaysia on visit visas, but overstayed there and ultimately became irregular.

Malaysia hired around 400,000 workers starting from August 2006. The Southeast Asian country early this year cancelled work visas of 55,000 Bangladeshi workers on the grounds of global economic recession.

The country recently decided to continue the ban on hiring workers from Bangladesh on the grounds of irregularities in recruitment systems.