'We’re poor people': Middle East's migrant workers look for way home amid pandemic
Jevie Olido from the Philippines has been in Lebanon for 14 years, but no longer has any money to send home. Photograph: Jacob Russell/The Guardian
Martin Chulov in Beirut and Michael Safi in Amman-
During 14 years in Lebanon, Jevie Olido’s four children have grown up without her, her marriage has failed and her parents have grown old. Now, the income that kept her far from her home in the Philippines has also gone, rubbed out by the coronavirus crisis and an economic implosion that has forced thousands of desperate domestic workers like her to look for ways to leave.
In neighbouring Jordan, Samir Ali, an Indian garment worker, is also waiting to be paid, after only receiving his March salary when he and other foreign workers at their factory threatened to strike.
The pandemic has crippled production across the country and caused clashes between labourers and employers. Eight of the 40 men had registered to go back to India once their contracts had finished. “We’ve decided this factory is really bad,” he said. “We’re poor people, so we have to find another way.”
Across the Middle East, the labour forces that have greased the wheels of the oil states’ economies, cleaned the homes of the middle classes and often raised their children, are suddenly on the move. The twin crises of Covid-19 and unprecedented financial stress has forced a reckoning like no other between employers and labour companies on one hand and masses of workers from all parts of the world.
According to the UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, it will have to be looked at whether such an accommodation can ever return. “One would have to look at it and see is this model sustainable,” he told a panel at the Beirut Institute thinktank this month. “We have been for many years trying to escape that model with varying degrees of success but I think this is going to accelerate the necessity for us to find something a little bit more sustainable.”
The Middle East, and especially Gulf states, employ the highest proportion of migrant workers in the world. In the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, migrants substantially outnumber the overall national population, while Saudi Arabia has most foreign workers overall with 12 million, compared with its national population of 20 million.
Health workers take the temperatures of migrant workers in Dubai in April. Photograph: Karim Sahib/AFP via Getty Images
While the region has fared relatively well in the coronavirus crisis, tens of thousands of people have still been struck down by the virus, the vast majority being migrant workers. Gulf governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on stimulus packages to shore up the livelihoods of citizens but have offered no direct financial relief for the migrants who in countries such as Qatar and the UAE make up more than 87% of the population.
“More than 200,000 people are relying on food aid,” said Krishna Neupane, a Nepali citizen working in Kuwait. He said his company was paying 75% of his salary but that thousands of others had lost their jobs and were struggling to keep up with rental payments.
In Oman and Bahrain, mass quarantines were seen by some as an opportunity to send workers home, accelerating a process of encouraging their own citizens to take up their jobs where possible, said Froilan Malit Jr, a researcher at Cambridge University who studies migrant worker populations.
The UAE has allowed legal migrant workers to take vacation time early to ride out the pandemic in their home countries with the hope they can return within a few months, while encouraging workers who have lost their jobs to talk to their national embassies about going home.
India has sent navy ships to Dubai to collect some of its citizens and arranged repatriation flights for those who can afford them. Kuwait has waived fines for undocumented workers who want to leave and offered to pay their fares. It has also said those who do go home may be able to return.
In Lebanon, limited repatriations for some of the country’s estimated 250,000 migrant workers, mostly domestic workers or labourers, have been made possible. But so far fewer than 3,000 workers have managed to leave. Those who remain face a bleak future, with a plunge in the currency slashing the dollar value of salaries.
“I used to be able to send money home, but since last December I haven’t worked and have no more money to send,” said Olido, 44. “I did not think I would be here for 14 years, I thought I was going to finish my contract then head home. My eldest was nine when I left. My second child was six, and my twins were five years old. I haven’t seen them in person since. I sacrificed for them and stayed.”
A report released on Friday predicted that millions of workers would eventually leave the region as the post-lockdown recession took hold, dramatically cutting the population of some states.
“Dependence on expat workers in vulnerable sectors means the burden of job losses will fall on the expat population,” Scott Livermore, the chief economist at Oxford Economics Middle East, writes in the study. “Combined with visas depending on employment and lack of a social safety net, an expat exodus is likely as travel restrictions are eased. This could result in the population declining by between 4% (in Saudi Arabia and Oman) and around 10% (in the UAE and Qatar).”
For now, though, many workers are attempting to ride things out. “A lot of those staying say they can survive for the next three to five months,” said Malit Jr. “Before they could afford to buy McDonald’s, now they chip in five dirhams [£1.12] per person for 10 people and eat collectively, so they can have three meals per day. Some are cooking their local delicacies and selling them online to other workers. Back home there are no job opportunities, and they know the cost of going home then returning to the Gulf is going to be high.”
During 14 years in Lebanon, Jevie Olido’s four children have grown up without her, her marriage has failed and her parents have grown old. Now, the income that kept her far from her home in the Philippines has also gone, rubbed out by the coronavirus crisis and an economic implosion that has forced thousands of desperate domestic workers like her to look for ways to leave.In neighbouring Jordan, Samir Ali, an Indian garment worker, is also waiting to be paid, after only receiving his March salary when he and other foreign workers at their factory threatened to strike.
The pandemic has crippled production across the country and caused clashes between labourers and employers. Eight of the 40 men had registered to go back to India once their contracts had finished. “We’ve decided this factory is really bad,” he said. “We’re poor people, so we have to find another way.”
Across the Middle East, the labour forces that have greased the wheels of the oil states’ economies, cleaned the homes of the middle classes and often raised their children, are suddenly on the move. The twin crises of Covid-19 and unprecedented financial stress has forced a reckoning like no other between employers and labour companies on one hand and masses of workers from all parts of the world.
According to the UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, it will have to be looked at whether such an accommodation can ever return. “One would have to look at it and see is this model sustainable,” he told a panel at the Beirut Institute thinktank this month. “We have been for many years trying to escape that model with varying degrees of success but I think this is going to accelerate the necessity for us to find something a little bit more sustainable.”
The Middle East, and especially Gulf states, employ the highest proportion of migrant workers in the world. In the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, migrants substantially outnumber the overall national population, while Saudi Arabia has most foreign workers overall with 12 million, compared with its national population of 20 million.
Health workers take the temperatures of migrant workers in Dubai in April. Photograph: Karim Sahib/AFP via Getty Images
While the region has fared relatively well in the coronavirus crisis, tens of thousands of people have still been struck down by the virus, the vast majority being migrant workers. Gulf governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on stimulus packages to shore up the livelihoods of citizens but have offered no direct financial relief for the migrants who in countries such as Qatar and the UAE make up more than 87% of the population.
“More than 200,000 people are relying on food aid,” said Krishna Neupane, a Nepali citizen working in Kuwait. He said his company was paying 75% of his salary but that thousands of others had lost their jobs and were struggling to keep up with rental payments.
In Oman and Bahrain, mass quarantines were seen by some as an opportunity to send workers home, accelerating a process of encouraging their own citizens to take up their jobs where possible, said Froilan Malit Jr, a researcher at Cambridge University who studies migrant worker populations.
The UAE has allowed legal migrant workers to take vacation time early to ride out the pandemic in their home countries with the hope they can return within a few months, while encouraging workers who have lost their jobs to talk to their national embassies about going home.
India has sent navy ships to Dubai to collect some of its citizens and arranged repatriation flights for those who can afford them. Kuwait has waived fines for undocumented workers who want to leave and offered to pay their fares. It has also said those who do go home may be able to return.
In Lebanon, limited repatriations for some of the country’s estimated 250,000 migrant workers, mostly domestic workers or labourers, have been made possible. But so far fewer than 3,000 workers have managed to leave. Those who remain face a bleak future, with a plunge in the currency slashing the dollar value of salaries.
“I used to be able to send money home, but since last December I haven’t worked and have no more money to send,” said Olido, 44. “I did not think I would be here for 14 years, I thought I was going to finish my contract then head home. My eldest was nine when I left. My second child was six, and my twins were five years old. I haven’t seen them in person since. I sacrificed for them and stayed.”
A report released on Friday predicted that millions of workers would eventually leave the region as the post-lockdown recession took hold, dramatically cutting the population of some states.
“Dependence on expat workers in vulnerable sectors means the burden of job losses will fall on the expat population,” Scott Livermore, the chief economist at Oxford Economics Middle East, writes in the study. “Combined with visas depending on employment and lack of a social safety net, an expat exodus is likely as travel restrictions are eased. This could result in the population declining by between 4% (in Saudi Arabia and Oman) and around 10% (in the UAE and Qatar).”
For now, though, many workers are attempting to ride things out. “A lot of those staying say they can survive for the next three to five months,” said Malit Jr. “Before they could afford to buy McDonald’s, now they chip in five dirhams [£1.12] per person for 10 people and eat collectively, so they can have three meals per day. Some are cooking their local delicacies and selling them online to other workers. Back home there are no job opportunities, and they know the cost of going home then returning to the Gulf is going to be high.”
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