The government decided to bear the cost of repatriating the corpses of ten Bangladeshi workers, who died in a fire on Sunday, from the Wage Earners' Welfare Fund.
Early hours on Sunday, the workers, nine from Comilla and one from Chandpur, died of suffocation when a fire broke out from an electric short circuit at their rented house in East Riffa, 30 kilometres off Manama.
“The board members of the fund took the decision as all the ten Bangladeshi workers were irregular in Bahrain and they had no legal employers to repatriate them,” Mohsin Chowdhury, director (welfare) of the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) told The Daily Star yesterday.
The workers went to Libya legally, but were working on irregular status. They used to wash cars there and their lifestyle was not good, he said.
He said they got nods from the families of the deceased that they want their relatives' bodies back home.
“We have already informed our embassy of it. As soon as the Bahrain labour department, police and fire brigade issue clearances, Bangladesh embassy would take all the necessary measures to repatriate the corpses,” Mohsin said.