However, many workers who left the region returned home with no money and no Search Archives  readily available jobs. Some regions were hit particularly hard economically. The South Indian state of Kerala relied heavily on remittances from workers employed abroad. A year after the pandemic struck the Middle East, 1.1 million out of 2.5 million Keralans employed in the Middle East had returned to their home state, resulting in a severe loss of income and a sharp rise in people seeking employment. It is hardly surprising that most people who were infected with COVID-19 in the Gulf region were migrant workers. As the proportion of mainly migrant non-nationals is high relative to the indigenous population—they are a majority in Bahrain and form over 80 percent of the population of the UAE and Qatar, as well as 44 percent in Oman—this may not seem surprising. But their infection rate was undoubtedly worsened by the close quarters in which many workers, notably in the construction sector, live. Large dormitories, where 15, 20 or more men share a room and common washrooms, allowed infection to spread easily. The pandemic also resulted in an increase in complaints by workers about nonpayment or under-payment of earned wages. This issue has been a cause of concern for NGOs that uphold migrant workers’ rights. In the early stages of the outbreak, a coalition of such organizations issued a call for an “Urgent Justice Mechanism” to be established to support workers whose wages had been unjustly withheld. Migrant Forum in Asia, an alliance of NGOS, has so far produced two reports titled “Crying Out for Justice,” which outline the various ways in which migrant workers in Asia (primarily in the Gulf) report being denied their due earnings, based on submissions from affiliated organizations. At least 59 percent of complaints recorded come from workers in the construction sector. Some countries introduced measures to assist workers trying to obtain payment, but their impact was limited. The UAE, for example, introduced an e-trials system in 2017 for civil disputes, which was given an expanded role in April 2020, to assist workers in pay disputes although many workers are not familiar enough with the technology to use it.