20,000 pending Italian visas to be delivered by Dec: Foreign adviser

Foreign Affairs Adviser Md Touhid Hossain on Tuesday said that the Italian Embassy in Dhaka will clear 20,000 visa applications by December as many visa applications had been pending for a long time.

“Twenty thousand visa cases have been cleared from Rome. [However] Progress in issuing those visas is very slow. The Italian ambassador assured me that these visas will be given by December. Italian Embassy is bringing in additional 2-3 officers to speed up the process,” Touhid told reporters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after a delegation of Italian visa seekers met him at his office.

Touhid added that about 40,000 applications have been submitted to the Italian Embassy. Ten representatives of the Italian work visa aspirants met the foreign affairs adviser at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday morning. During the meeting, the visa aspirants appealed for the all-out cooperation of the Bangladesh government to quickly solve this problem along with their various sufferings due to the long process in visa issuance.

“We have asked the delegation not to hold processions, meetings and any strike programmes. Doing this will not benefit the visa aspirants, nor will the country benefit. Because, if they are afraid, then more officers will leave. It can be seen that the visa is not being issued.  We are pressuring the Italian embassy. We hope that the matter will be resolved peacefully,” Touhid also stated.

He pointed out that issuing visas is the sovereign right of any country, and we cannot question why they haven't granted a visa. Pressuring the Italian authorities could backfire and potentially jeopardize the entire visa program.

In response to the question that the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has moved from India to the United Arab Emirates, what information does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have? We searched in Delhi, we also searched in UAE. No one could give confirmation officially.

Bringing back expatriates from Lebanon, Touhid said, those who want to return from Lebanon, have been asked to list them. They (expatriates) have been told to move a little north from the war zone. We have requested the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to arrange flights so that they can leave.

However, earlier, the Italian Embassy in Dhaka had issued a statement urging applicants to refrain from submitting forged documents, emphasizing that all applications would undergo rigorous scrutiny to prevent fraud.

The embassy reassured applicants that their “nulla osta” – the document issued by Italian immigration authorities allowing non-EU nationals to apply for a work visa – would not expire once an application or appointment request had been lodged.