When 26-year-old Nasir Khan went to Saudi Arabia to work as a taxi driver, he found no shortage of customers. One day, however, when Khan picked up a passenger in Riyadh’s blistering heat, the customer refused to pay him. When Khan insisted on his money, the man stabbed him and fled.
Category: Destination Country
More than 80% of our Sri Lankan emigrant labour are absorbed by the Gulf countries, according to the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment; 34% of these are women, mostly domestic workers who get paid subsistence level salaries of Rs. 20-30,000 over there. As I went about interviewing various potential labour migrants, migrants’ families as […]
Suffering beatings, burns and abuse for over a year, a domestic maid escapes from her Kuwaiti employers and finally comes home “I was beaten up daily for silly reasons. I was locked up in a store-room and they used to inflict burns on my body whenever they were angry. They provided only a little food […]
Young Bangladeshi female migrants, working in the middle eastern and other oil-rich countries are increasingly subjected to torture and sexual abuse by their employers. Sources in Bangladesh embassy in Riyadh said that of the victims, younger ones become more vulnerable despite their legal status in the destination countries. In many cases the employers pick them […]
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is home to around 2.8 million Indian nationals, of which 60-70 per cent are blue-collar workers. The UAE has the second largest community of Indians, after Saudi Arabia. But the exact number of Indian blue-collar workers there is not available as the UAE authorities do not share such data with […]
Migrant workers have been stuck in the Gulf country for over 18 months, without food, water or adequate shelter “For the last 18 months, Embassy officials and ministers are coming and going. We hear the same words. We will be rescued soon, help is on the way, no need to worry… But now we are […]
Despite recent reforms in the country, Doha’s restrictive employment policies continue to challenge migrant mothers and split families On an average day, Faith sends nearly 100 messages on WhatsApp to her children and family back home in Nairobi, Kenya. “It’s cheaper than calling,” she said. “And I’m only working in Qatar to support them.” In […]
In the Churu city of Rajasthan, India, a family of 10 is desperately worried. Six years ago, Yousuf Ali*, the third of eight siblings, took a loan to leave for Riyadh to work as part of Empower Contracting, a subsidiary of the construction business Saudi Binladen Group. The dream to support his family did not […]
The oil rich country with its luxurious lifestyle and cuisine from around the world is a perfect holiday destination. But beneath the glitz and glamour there’s a dark side as thousands of migrant laborers toil away, hidden, always under surveillance of local forces. The migrant workers often forego wages they are entitled to and don’t […]
Muhammad, wide-eyed and hopeful, joined millions of other migrants from Pakistan and India who arrived in the Gulf with dreams in their eyes, ready for the promise of an improved household economy. However, life in Dubai ended up being a disappointment. Muhammad would wake up at 4 am to work, and come back by 8 […]