Bangladesh Missions in Saudi Arabia Struggle to Serve 3.5 Million Workers

📋 Bangladesh's three diplomatic missions in Saudi Arabia are struggling to serve around 3.5 million Bangladeshis living and working in the kingdom, with the foreign ministry citing severe manpower shortages as a major challenge. The ministry informed the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs that existing staff numbers were inadequate to handle consular services, labour and welfare issues, trade and the other needs of the expatriate community — an admission delivered at the committee's third meeting at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban on 25 October.

📝 The staffing arithmetic is stark. The Bangladesh Embassy in Riyadh — which handles bilateral relations, labour and welfare, trade, press, defence, economic affairs and passport and visa services — has 14 officers under the ambassador. The Consulate General in Jeddah, responsible for consular services, labour and welfare, commercial activities and Hajj management, has around 22 officers. The Permanent Mission to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), also in Jeddah, has just one officer under the permanent representative. The current number of officers at the missions is extremely limited compared with the number of expatriate Bangladeshis and the volume of services and welfare matters they must handle, the meeting brief stated.

⚖ The executions that forced the reckoning

⚠ Behind the staffing review lies a tragedy that exposed the system's blind spots. Saudi authorities executed Nazrul Islam Abdul Basir and Sweety Akter in Mecca on 14 October over alleged immoral activities at a mosque. But a letter sent by the Bangladesh Consulate General to the Ministry of Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment on 18 October revealed that Nazrul had been arrested on 1 August 2023 on cybercrime allegations, while Sweety was detained the following day on an adultery allegation. Their names appeared on a list of prisoners sent by Saudi authorities on 30 September — without any mention of impending executions — and Saudi authorities did not inform the consulate beforehand of the death sentences or their execution. Bangladesh has since sought details of the verdicts, charges and judicial proceedings.

🗣 Committee chair Jahrat Adib Chowdhury was unsparing with journalists: the committee questioned why the consulate had not been informed earlier and whether there had been any lapse or negligence by the officials concerned. Given Bangladesh's good relations with Saudi Arabia, why were we not informed earlier? he asked, adding that the incident had exposed weaknesses in the system. Referring to information shared 14 days before the execution, he said the ministry admitted no one had actually identified the report as flagging capital cases — officials had assumed the prisoners listed would face jail terms ranging from six months to 15 years, not death sentences. The ministry has sought answers from Saudi Arabia and must share the responses with the committee, which has also requested a report on whether the consulate was negligent, what action follows any negligence, and what steps will prevent similar incidents.

🛡 The prison picture compounds the concern: 306 Bangladeshis are held in prisons across western Saudi Arabia, including 147 serving sentences ranging from one month to 15 years — a caseload far beyond what a handful of consular officers can meaningfully monitor.

👩 The female-worker protection record

👥 The committee also confronted the scale of abuse faced by Bangladeshi female migrant workers, with ministry data showing around 169,000 Bangladeshi women currently working in the kingdom. Authorities ask workers about their welfare when they visit to collect their passports, while third-party surveys are also conducted, and 1,364 female domestic workers have been rescued and safely repatriated, according to the ministry, which estimates that 1-2 percent of female workers experience abuse. Jahrat refused to let the percentage minimise the problem: people may consider 1-2 percent a small proportion, but 1,364 rescued workers is not acceptable, he said, and the committee has instructed the ministry to bring such incidents down to zero.

💰 Why the mission capacity is an economic issue

🚀 The stakes extend far beyond consular paperwork. Bangladesh began sending workers to Saudi Arabia in 1976, and the kingdom remains the leading destination for Bangladeshi labour and a major source of remittances: Bangladesh Bank data show remittances from Saudi Arabia reached $5.8491 billion in the 2025-26 fiscal year, up 37.2 percent from $4.2644 billion a year earlier — the single largest contributor to the inflows that anchor the country's balance of payments. Around 3.5 million Bangladeshis live and work there, and a record 752,715 workers went to the kingdom in 2025, the highest number sent to any single country that year.

🧭 Every dimension of that relationship passes through the missions: passport renewals that keep workers legal, labour disputes that decide whether wages come home, welfare interventions that determine whether abuse victims return safely, and the documentation pipeline that keeps the recruitment corridor open. With roughly one officer for every 100,000 expatriates, the maths is indefensible — and the committee's findings now put manpower expansion, case-tracking systems and prisoner-monitoring protocols on the public record as explicit demands.

🔭 The path forward is uncontroversial in outline: more consular officers, legal-aid funding for death-penalty and long-term-prisoner cases, systematic verification of Saudi prisoner lists, welfare outreach embedded in routine services, and escalation protocols that treat any capital case as an emergency. The harder question is diplomatic — how Bangladesh presses for earlier notification from a partner whose judicial opacity is sovereign policy. The committee has demanded answers; the 3.5 million workers whose remittances build the nation's reserves deserve those answers to become reforms.