From MFA Partners “Prevalence of wage theft is endemic to labour migration” – William Gois, MFA The below wage theft cases in the GCC and ASEAN region were collected by MFA partners in separate submissions. 1. Awaj Foundation (Bangladesh) received 14 cases of wage theft from Bangladeshi workers. a. 8 out of the 14 cases were reported from KSA. 2 cases were from migrants recruited to Libya via the Libyan embassy in Dhaka. Other CODs included Qatar, Vietnam and Lebanon. b. 4 cases were reported by domestic workers. c. All workers reported wage theft for more than one year, except for one domestic worker that was not paid for 3 years. 2. People Forum (Nepal) provides legal support and aid to migrant workers and returnees. From September 2011 to July 2020, it has provided free legal aid service to 22,635 distress and destitute migrant workers and their families and have facilitated the acquisition of verdicts providing compensation of NRs 806,933,880/- to victims through free legal aid service. Via legal recourse, the organisation was also able to facilitate verdicts providing compensation to 20 victims of wage theft. 69 percent of the cases were workers victimized by recruiting agencies and 31 percent were cheated by individual agents who functioned illegally. a. From 16 July 2020 to 8 May 2021, People Forum received 1,317 complaints where 16 percent (217 complaints) was related to wage theft in destination countries. The cases have further been filed with the Department of foreign Employment. b. 56% of cases were filed by migrant workers/returnees from the UAE, 12% from KSA, 10% from Kuwait, 8% from Qatar, 4% from Malaysia. Other destination countries included Afghanistan, Ukraine, Ghana, Maldives, Malta, Turkey, Africa, Cambodia, Cyprus, Jordan, Macau and Iraq. c. 91% of wage theft cases were registered by men and the remaining 9 percent were by women. The low level of female cases was linked to the current restrictions of travel and migrant employment for females in certain GCC countries. 3. Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) reported 15 cases of wage theft under one sponsor in the construction sector from Bahrain. a. 11 out of the 15 cases were from India. Other 4 were from Bangladeshi and Nepali migrant workers. b. The period of abuse varied from 8 to 16 months. All workers have been employed under the sponsor for more than 3 years. c. All workers were undocumented and recruited under work visa. 4. In Dubai Labour Courts alone, partners have reported 11 cases of wage theft for which they were able to secure legal redress at Labour Courts in Dubai. All the victims worked for one employer, a prominent construction company in Dubai which had not paid them for a common period of 1 year. Total dues owed to each worker ranged from USD $13,600 to USD $48,600. 5. South Asian Regional Trade Union Council carried out a survey of 142 returnees from five provinces of Nepal (selected based upon the highest proportion of returnees to each province). a. The survey showed that 15.9% of respondents did not receive their salary during the pandemic and 7.2% reported being forced out of their job. 37.5% reported wage theft (non-payment of salary) prior to the pandemic. b. Since the start of the pandemic 48.6% of respondents reported to have experienced different forms of mistreatment and abuses. 19