DHAKA: The government has started working on the resumption of the repatriation process of the Rohingya refugees, after Myanmar's recent agreement to accept more than six thousand of the refugees.

"We've recently got the clearance for acceptance of 6,622 Rohingya refugees for repatriation to their home state of Rakhaine (Arakan), and we hope to resume the process soon," Foreign Secretary Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury told New Age on Thursday. "There is yet no agreed time-frame for the resumption of the repatriation process."

The foreign ministry sources expect that the process would start in a couple of months. Repatriation of the Rohingya refugees has remained stalled since the August 9 return of some seven members of two Rohingya families to their homeland.

Sources in the ministry said that 8,398 refugees recently expressed their willingness to return to their homeland under a voluntary repatriation scheme, and Yangon has given its nod to 6,622 of its nationals, now languishing in the refugee camps of Bangladesh.

Some 21,000 Rohingyas are living in two refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, waiting to return to Myanmar. "We can capitalize on the existing Bangladesh-Myanmar friendly ties, which are better than ever before," added a foreign office source.

Janet Lim, Asia Pacific director of the UNHCR, has expressed concern over the latest situation involving the criminality-prone Rohingya refugees of Kutupalong camp after a visit of the UNHCR team there on December 4.

Esko Kentrschynskyj, ambassador and head of delegation of the European Commission, on December 14 went to Cox's Bazar to see for himself, on behalf of the European Union, the latest circumstances and the rights situation in the two refugee camps there, said diplomatic sources.