The first batch of Rohingyas is set to be repatriated on Nov 15, says Foreign Secretary M Shahidul Haque.

According to several officials familiar with the matter, the first batch will consist of 2,260 Rohingyas of 458 families.

Speaking to Bangla Tribune, the foreign secretary, however, did not disclose a specific number.

“If everything goes right, the first batch will be repatriated on Nov 15. We are working on different numbers. We have handed over a list of over 22,000 for verification in our last meeting in Dhaka. We can share the number when they will be actually repatriated,” he said.

Haque said they expect to repatriate several more batches before the general election. “We hope that when the process will start, it will continue.”

Dismissing reports of ‘lack of communication’ between the government and UN agencies over repatriating Rohingyas, Haque said on Saturday, “We are constantly in touch with them and even today our officials had a meeting with the UNHCR chief in Bangladesh.”

According to him, the UN refugee agency “are in the loop from the very beginning” as both Bangladesh and Myanmar had signed deals with it.

“As a matter of fact when the Myanmar delegation visited camps in Cox’s Bazar last week, they had a meeting with UNHCR officials and responded to their queries,” said the foreign secretary.

The same day Dhaka sent a repatriation list to Nay Pyi Taw and the UNHCR, he added. “Repatriation is a long process but it will continue when it starts.”

About the Rohingyas trapped on the strip of unclaimed land between the borders of the two countries, Haque said Myanmar government has allowed Red Cross to communicate with 4,500 people on the zero line so that they go back to their houses, which were not destroyed.

“Myanmar has informed us that they have closed down four camps for internally displaced people and in the process of closing down another 19 camps,” said the foreign secretary.

More than 700,000 Rohingyas crossed from Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s Rakhine into Bangladesh from August last year after Rohingya insurgent attacks on the Myanmar security forces triggered a sweeping military response.

The UN refugee agency, however, says conditions in Rakhine state were “not yet conducive for returns”, stressing that they must be voluntary, Reuters reported last week.

Necessary safeguards are “absent” in the region, where it has had only limited access amid continuing restrictions for media and other independent observers, the UN agency .

“It is critical that returns are not rushed or premature,” UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic told Reuters in Geneva. “We would advise against imposing any timetable or target figures for repatriation.”