Bahrain deports over 11,000 illegal expatriates

DUBAI: More than 11,000 foreign workers, including Indians, have been sent to their home countries in the last five months for illegally staying in the Gulf nation 7of Bahrain.
    
The number is set to increase as an amnesty scheme launched on August 1 to regularise the status of thousands of expatriates ends on December 31.
    
The government has already warned that there would be no extension of the grace period for late amnesty-seekers.
    
"We deported 987 illegal expatriates between December 15 and 23, which has brought the total number of deportees since August 1 to 11,053," the acting head of human and financial resources at Bahrain Interior Ministry said in a statement.
    
The deportees were mainly unskilled labourers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.
    
The five-month amnesty is part of a plan to regulate and manage the labour market by the Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA), an independent government organisation.