Malaysia followed with 73 cases of wage theft from female migrant workers. Malaysia is the
only destination country where more female migrants’ cases were reported than male
migrants.
UAE, Kuwait and Qatar registered respectively 12, 9 and 6 cases of wage theft faced by
female migrant workers
Female migrants faced wage theft in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, China, Philippines and
Singapore
Among countries of origin, Indonesia filed the highest number of cases with respect to
female migrant workers at 86
Philippines and Bangladesh filed 59 and 51 cases respectively. Philippines was the only
origin country that has registered more female cases than male (3 cases). India and Nepal
registered three and two cases respectively
The high proportion of domestic workers among female cases in countries (except
Malaysia)§ demonstrated the continuing vulnerability and precarity of women involved in care
work. For instance, 71 out of 80 cases of females in KSA, 8 out of 12 cases in UAE and 8 out
of 9 cases in Kuwait were of domestic workers. All female cases from Jordan, Lebanon, Hong
Kong and Iraq (between 1-4 cases) as well were of domestic workers.
DOCUMENTATION
A total of 753 cases of wage theft were experienced by documented workers and 359 cases by
undocumented workers, the report said. Out of 359 cases, 39 cases of undocumented workers
were female migrant workers, primarily located in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. A majority of them
were from Indonesia, followed by Bangladesh. Among countries of origin, while Philippines has
the highest proportion of documented workers, Indonesia was observed as having the largest
proportion of cases related to undocumented workers (58%), followed by Nepal (33.6%).
For documented workers, the major countries of destination where wage theft cases were
reported to the platform included UAE (accounting for 44.8% of total cases of documented
workers), KSA (30%), and Malaysia (10%). This was followed by (in the order of number of cases)
Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, China and Singapore. All cases from Jordan were documented
workers. Other countries of documented workers included Hong Kong, Japan, Libya, Maldives,
Poland, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.