Seven working days to fix sixteen permit applications for a group from Bangladesh

01 / The notice

Wednesday, 16:40: sixteen applications left without motion

At 16:40 on Wednesday, Nataliia, Head of Documents at WORKIN, opened the logistics company's online account for the second time that day. On Monday we had filed sixteen permit applications there for order pickers and loaders from Bangladesh. Now each of them carried the same note: application left without motion, documents incomplete, copies of all passport pages with personal data and a certified translation missing. Nataliia opened the passport scan of the first candidate, Sabbir, and turned to the next page. It showed, in Latin script, his father's name, his mother's name and a permanent address in a village near Sylhet. The file contained no copy or translation of that page.

The law allows seven working days for corrections. The group's route already had a calendar with the consulate stage fixed to specific weeks, and in Bangladesh sixteen people were waiting for news of their permits. To understand why that page became an issue for the whole group, and how we managed in five days out of seven, we need to go back three weeks.

02 / Request

A new zone at the distribution centre and why we proposed Bangladesh

The logistics company in the Lviv region had signed a contract with a household goods retail chain and had four months to open a new picking zone at its distribution centre. The operations director came to us with a task: ten order pickers and six loaders with experience of large warehouses. He did not know where to find the people and asked for our advice.

Olena, who runs company projects at WORKIN, and Kemal, our Head of Recruitment, laid out the options. Visa-free countries offer a four-to-seven-week route, but the company had four months, so speed was not the priority. What mattered most was warehouse experience with handheld scanners and labels in Latin script. In Bangladesh, a huge flow of goods passes through the port of Chattogram and the warehouses of garment exporters around Dhaka, and people spend years there as order pickers and loaders. WORKIN's partner had a reserve of exactly such candidates. The senior workers in the group speak English, as does the company's warehouse manager, and Arif, our Worker Relations Manager for Bangladesh and Nepal, speaks Bengali with everyone. The D visa route of eight to twelve weeks fitted the deadline. The operations director agreed.

We built the calendar back from the day the zone would open: handover, entry, consulate, permits, selection. Between the permits and the consulate we added a margin, because that junction is where things most often slip. At that point nobody knew what exactly it would be needed for.

1. 01

   Experience

   Exporters' warehouses and container stations, handheld scanners, labels in Latin script.

2. 02

   Reserve

   A partner in Dhaka and Chattogram with a database of warehouse workers.

3. 03

   Language

   Bengali with Arif, English for the group's seniors and the warehouse manager.

4. 04

   Route

   D visa, eight to twelve weeks against four months to opening.

03 / Selection

A label, a shelf and a pallet: interviews in Dhaka and Chattogram

Arif held interviews with our licensed partner in Dhaka and Chattogram. First came a conversation in Bengali: which warehouse the person had worked in, with a scanner or with paper pick lists, why they wanted to go and who was waiting at home. Then a practical task over video for the company's warehouse manager: read a label with an order number and a location code, find the right box on a test shelf, and stack boxes of different weights on a pallet with the heavier ones at the bottom. The warehouse manager approved each person himself.

The company approved sixteen people and three in reserve. Sabbir, twenty-nine, five years as a loader at a container station in Chattogram, comes from a village near Sylhet, where his parents live with his younger brother, whose studies he pays for. Rashed, thirty-four, an order picker at a garment exporter's warehouse outside Dhaka, speaks English and became the group's contact person. Imran, twenty-four, the youngest, spent two years at an online retailer's warehouse in Dhaka.

Everyone received an information sheet in Bengali: the company, the address of the distribution centre and the dormitory, the job title, the contract term, the approximate processing time and a contact in Ukraine. Arif explained the order of the route to the group, permits, visas, entry, and warned that at any stage they might be asked for a document. The candidates had seen the general list on the page on documents for candidates. That request came sooner than we expected.

04 / Filing

Sixteen applications checked letter by letter and two account checks a day

Nataliia collected the company's documents using the company checklist, and each candidate's file as the law requires. The partner made copies of the passport pages from the originals, translators we work with regularly did the translations, and a notary certified the translators' signatures. Before filing, two people checked every file. On Monday of week three we filed sixteen applications through the employer's online account.

The employment centre checks for grounds to leave an application without motion on the next working day, publishes the decision on its website within two working days and sends it to the employer electronically. A decision to issue a permit is made within seven working days of registration. That is why, after every filing, someone from the documents team opens the employer's online account every day at nine and at four. Seven working days for corrections is not much, and we cannot afford to lose even one just to find out about a remark.

05 / The remark

The second passport page and the choice between a letter and a correction

The remark concerned one thing, but in all sixteen applications. In a Bangladeshi passport the main page shows the name, date and place of birth, passport number and expiry date. The names of the father, mother and spouse and the permanent address are on a separate page. We had filed a copy and translation of the main page, as we do for citizens of most countries. The employment centre decided that the page with the parents' names and address also contains personal data and had to be in the file with a translation.

The law offers two paths. The shortcomings can be corrected within seven working days. Or the employer can attach an explanatory letter on remarks it disagrees with. There were grounds to argue: a person's core details are on the main page, and files like ours had been accepted before without remarks. But if the letter were found unjustified, the centre would refuse the permits. After a refusal the fee is returned to the employer's account within ten working days and the documents can be filed again, but the group's route would have slipped by a month at least.

Nataliia costed the second path: sixteen passports held by people in different cities of Bangladesh, sixteen copies from the originals, sixteen translations, notarised signatures and a second check. If nothing went wrong, five working days. At ten on Thursday, after a call with the operations director, the decision was made: we do not argue, we correct. Being right mattered less to us than bringing the people in on time.

06 / Seven working days

Kyiv rests, Bangladesh works: corrections in five days

We counted cautiously, from the day the decision was published, so that no reading could make us miss the date. The seventh working day fell on the following Friday, and Nataliia set Wednesday as the target. Thursday was a day of calls: by the evening Arif had spoken in Bengali with all sixteen. He explained that nobody had been dropped: the centre wanted one more passport page, and it had to be copied from the original at the partner's office. Eleven people lived near Dhaka, and five were waiting at home: two in Chattogram, one each in Rangpur and Cumilla, and Sabbir near Sylhet. Sabbir first thought he had been removed from the group, and Arif had to explain twice that the task was for everyone, not for him alone.

The two countries' calendars helped. In Bangladesh the weekly day off is Friday, while Saturday and Sunday are working days, so while Kyiv had its weekend the partner was at work. The two in Chattogram went to the partner's office there, and the other three took night buses to Dhaka on Friday evening. On Saturday the partner made copies from the originals and scanned the page at the same quality as the main one, and by Monday morning we had scans for all sixteen.

On Monday the translators started work with one rule from Nataliia: names and place names are written in Ukrainian exactly as in the translations of the main pages, and any new name is agreed with us before signing. On Tuesday the notary certified the translators' signatures. On Wednesday morning a second person from the team checked every translation against the scan letter by letter, and at 13:00 the corrections for all sixteen applications were filed. Two working days of the deadline remained.

1. Wednesday, 16:40

   Decision to leave the applications without motion appears in the employer's account.

2. Thursday, day 1

   Decision to correct, call with the company, calls to all 16 candidates.

3. Friday, day 2

   Day off in Bangladesh, three people take night buses to Dhaka.

4. Saturday and Sunday

   Working days in Bangladesh: copies from originals and scans.

5. Monday, day 3

   Sixteen translations with one spelling of names.

6. Tuesday, day 4

   The notary certifies the translators' signatures.

7. Wednesday, day 5

   Second check, corrections filed at 13:00.

07 / Permits

Sixteen permits and a calendar with enough margin

The employment centre accepted the corrections without further questions, and on Monday of week five the decisions to issue all sixteen permits appeared in the account. We were three working days behind plan. A refusal after an argument would have cost a month.

Next we had to check that those three days had not affected anything further down the chain. The first group had a consulate appointment in week six and needed invitations, certified copies of the permits and housing confirmation. Olena agreed with the company to sign the invitations on the day the permits were issued, and the first group's files were ready in time. The 90-day term for signing employment contracts ran from the date the permits were issued, and the contracts were scheduled for week twelve, long before it ended.

The group went through the consulate in three appointments of six, five and five people. Before each one Arif checked the D visa file and went over with people once more what they would say about the job. Visas for all sixteen were ready in week ten, and we bought tickets for one date.

• for Bangladeshi passports we copy and translate both the main page and the page with the parents' names and address;
• names and place names are written the same way in Ukrainian across all of a group's translations;
• after filing we check the employer's online account twice a day;
• we count the correction period from the day the decision is published and set our own target two days earlier.

08 / Arrival

The border, the dormitory and residence permits with both pages translated

Before departure Arif held a video meeting with the group. Everyone packed a folder in their hand luggage: passport with visa, a copy of the permit, the invitation, the dormitory address and Arif's phone number. Arif went through the questions that may be asked at the border: the purpose of the trip, the employer, the job, where the person will live.

The group flew to a country neighbouring Ukraine, crossed the land border by coach and arrived in the Lviv region on Sunday evening. Arif met them and took them to the dormitory near the distribution centre. We had checked the dormitory documents for address registration before the permit filing as part of living support.

On Monday the company signed employment contracts with all sixteen people, and we filed the copies within the 10-day term. Tax numbers and bank accounts were done in the first week. A temporary residence permit filing requires a passport with a notarised translation, and that Wednesday paid off again: translations of both pages were ready, with names matching to the letter. The migration partner accepted the files in groups of four without corrections.

That is where our part ended: training and assigning people to warehouse zones is the company's job. We keep the group's documents under migration support, and what the company is responsible for as the employer is described on the page on employer duties.

09 / Summary

Seven working days, of which we needed five

Remark

Copy and translation of the passport page with parents' names and address

Decision

Correct rather than argue with a letter

Correction

5 working days out of 7, for all 16 applications

Permits

16 of 16, three working days behind plan

Entry

The whole group in the planned week

An application left without motion is not yet a refusal, provided that on day one you read the remark, cost both paths and choose the one that leads to the permit faster. WORKIN takes on that choice and the work across two countries with different weekends, so the company hears about a remark when the correction plan is already in place. The WORKIN replacement guarantee runs for at least 6 months from the worker's first shift, provided the agreed working, pay and housing conditions are kept, and finding a replacement is not charged again. How to manage candidates' documents from Bangladesh on a long route is covered in the scenario on a document tracker for a corrugated plant, how to separate required documents from unnecessary ones in the scenario on documents from abroad, and what to do when permits have been issued but the intermediary has vanished in the scenario on stalled permits. The document itself is described on the work permit page, and the whole journey on How it works. More on the pages on workers for logistics, warehouse workers and workers from Bangladesh.

10 / FAQ

Questions and answers