If we are to ‘Build Back Better’, we cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the issue of wage theft that has been
persistent across migration corridors for years, and will be unprecedented in the case of repatriated migrant workers
in the COVID 19 pandemic.
Many migrant workers have reconciled to the situation of wage theft in the form of unfair or unpaid wages for months
and years before the COVID 19 pandemic. They have accepted it as their fate and refrained from complaining lest they
lose their jobs, or, worse still, live with the fear of being made undocumented.
Each year, millions of dollars are lost in potential remittances due to wage theft, even as countries of origin continue
to explore new markets for deployment of migrant workers while countries of destination thrive on cheap and
exploitable migrant labour.
Repatriation of migrant workers without due diligence by states in the time of the COVID 19 pandemic will only serve
to leave unattended the injustices that migrant workers bear, exonerate employers and perpetrators of violence
against migrant workers, and wipe away all records of legitimate claims and grievances.
The millions who are and will be repatriated will impact the development trajectory of families for whom a single
migrant worker is a source of hope for a better future for generations to come. This dream, this resilience of the
migrant’s journey must not be stifled as the COVID 19 pandemic runs its course.
If unaddressed at this time, we run the risk of forever delinking the patterns that connect migration to development,
as the stories of the lives of migrant workers will bear witness to this mass injustice for years to come.