Manoj and his colleagues refused to leave and continued to demand their unpaid
wages. “Once they realised we will not back off, they offered to give us back our
passports and pay for our return to Kerala under the condition that we give up our
unpaid wages,” he said. They rejected the offer. “They cut off our electricity after that.”
By then, it was the middle of August, when temperatures can reach as high as 40℃ in
Bahrain. Determined to get what they were owed, the workers continued to occupy
their accommodation. Without electricity, they had to spend the hottest parts of the
day in air-conditioned shopping malls and rely on a portable stove, provided by a
Keralite charity, to cook.
By September, some workers had found new employers and others were repatriated
on rescue missions, but despite their efforts they have still not received the
thousands of pounds in unpaid salary they are owed.
Stolen wages
Manoj is one of hundreds of migrant workers from Kerala who were left stranded and
without months’ worth of pay during the pandemic. In the Gulf alone, over 700
Keralite workers have reported non-payment of wages since the pandemic began,
according to the Centre for Indian Migrant Studies. But with millions of migrant
workers in the region, the true number is likely much higher.
Wage theft – the denial of wages or benefits rightfully owed to an employee – could
devastate Kerala’s economy. Just under a half of Keralite households include labour
migrants, while remittances from migrant workers account for a quarter of the state’s
gross domestic product.
“This is a community which has provided a lot, not only to Kerala in terms of financial
and social capital, but also to the destinations as well, becoming entrenched and
quite influential in many sectors in the Gulf,” said Irudaya Rajan, a leading expert on
Keralite migration at the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram.