As the lockdowns across the world continue, businesses and workers are all suffering, but some of the more vulnerable to the crisis are migrant workers. Tanzia Haq reports.
In the substandard spaces that most migrant workers across the world are currently living in, fear is running rampant that infection will spread like wildfire and will become impossible to contain. This concern is especially high in Gulf states where migrant workers make up half of the population according to the World Factbook.
Workers have been living shut in from the outside world, deprived from making an income and from going back to their families. Often, migrant workers are also vulnerable because they don’t have extensive health coverage and may not receive care if they fall victim to the pandemic.
Construction, retail and tourism industries are some of the hardest hit and also employ the most foreign labor. Another source of worry for these workers is that their families rely on their incomes and the economic impact this loss will have on them might turn into irreparable damage.
Gulf states have also reported that huge portions of their COVID-19 cases are migrant workers. The health ministry of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia reported on 5 April that 53 per cent of their cases were foreigners. Like most other nations, advocates say that the protections that the Gulf nations are planning do not extend to migrants.
Although King Salman announced in March that he would cover costs for anyone in Saudi Arabia affected by COVID-19, the $2.4 billion bailout for covering part of salaries of job holders in the private sector does not extend to migrant workers.
There is also the matter of following protocol for avoiding infection. Most migrant workers live and work in situations that are crowded and regular handwashing improbable. Most workers share rooms and eat meals in crowded halls. Migrant advocates fear that these countries, heavily reliant on foreign labor, are not recognizing the need to address these conditions.
The lives and living conditions of migrant workers are rarely part of mainstream news when things are normal. Even in this crisis, these people’s stories are falling through the cracks unheard. The governments these people prop up must be brought to see that if these people fall, so will the empires on resting on their shoulders.
- For more on this visit:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/migrant-workers-bear-brunt-of-coronavirus-pandemic-in-gulf
- https://www.spa.gov.sa/viewfullstory.php?lang=en&newsid=2069887
