The UAE has stopped issuing visas to workers from Bangladesh, recruiting companies said yesterday (August 27), in a move that threatens to strangle vital remittances for the South Asian country.

The UAE has emerged as the biggest recruiter of Bangladeshi labourers in recent years, accounting for about 50 per cent of all overseas employment opportunities after jobs dwindled in Saudi Arabia, said a report in our sister publication, the Gulf Daily News.

"Since last week we haven't had any working visas issued from the UAE," said Shahjalal Majumdar, president of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies.

There has been no official confirmation from the UAE, but Bangladesh's Overseas Employment Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain said that the UAE government had "scaled down" manpower imports from several nations.

Money sent by Bangladesh's more than eight million migrants has been the key driver of its economy.

Migrant workers sent home a record $12.85 billion in the fiscal year ended in June, accounting for 12 per cent of Bangladesh's gross domestic product, official figures show.

The numbers of Bangladeshis heading to Saudi Arabia slowed sharply after 2009 when the kingdom hired only 14,666 Bangladeshis compared with 258,348 by the UAE, according to government figures.