09/09/2020
South Asian migrant workers seek justice as wage theft worsens under coronavirus - Reuters
But their migrant status makes it much harder for them to seek justice when things go
wrong - as they have for large numbers in recent months as the pandemic has closed
borders and devastated economies.
Even before the pandemic, unions and lawyers like Kochery say, the system for dealing with
such cases was lacking.
Now, they say, there is a desperate need for an overhaul to cope with the challenges that
come with the large-scale return of migrants.
The number of wage theft cases reported from Gulf countries rose more than three-fold
between April and July compared with the same period last year, says the Business and
Human Rights Resource Centre, which advocates for human rights in business.
MONEY MATTERS
Bhoomaiah Motapalkula, 38, who worked as an office messenger, had not been paid his full
salary since April 2019 when he had to return to India.
Now home, he is talking to lawyers about getting the AED25,000 ($6,800) he says his
employer in Dubai owes him.
“I trusted my employer each time he reassured me about my wages and handed me a little
money to meet my needs,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “I came home with
nothing.”
In Bangladesh, returning migrants have on an average lost about 175,000 taka ($2,000),
according to a study by the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit.
The charity, which based its figures on interviews with about 50 migrants, found most of
the losses were unpaid wages.
Many workers have also lost out on the end-of-service benefits that they typically receive in
the Gulf, said Ryszard Cholewinski, senior migration specialist for Arab states with the
International Labour Organisation (ILO).
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-migrants-wages-insight-trfn/south-asian-migrant-workers-seek-justice-as-wage-theft-worsens-under-cor…
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