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 […]
Gireesh Kumar, an engineer from the south Indian state of Kerala at a company in Qatar, is quite hopeful as the Qatari government is initiating wide-ranging reforms in its labour system to protect and respect migrant workers’ rights. Gireesh who joined an oil company in Qatar some two years ago was betrayed by the recruitment […]
Ram was sent to Malaysia by an agent from his village in Dhanusa, and is currently in Kathmandu en route to Dubai. When asked if he used the same agent for Dubai as he did for Malaysia, he replied: “Despite arranging a good job for me in Malaysia, I did not trust him because his […]
Zhob had a very simple life we were 5 sisters and 4 brothers so I had 8 siblings My dad was doing labour in zhob as you know day by day expenses are compounding .I was in very cryptic sphere I used to get distraught whilst looking at my younger sibling that what will be […]
Manjusha Om, a 38-year-old divorcee from Kerala and mother of two girl children aged 14 and 8, emigrated to Saudi Arabia to earn little extra money last March. But last week, she returned to Palode, a small village in the foothills of the Western Ghat mountain ranges in Thiruvananthapuram, empty handed with scars of physical […]
The effects of the Saudi Arabia-led blockade of Qatar, which has been in place for over 100 days, are beginning to show. Prices of commodities such as rice and vegetables have been rising bit by bit, travel out of and into Qatar is getting more expensive, and jobs are vanishing. Everyone feels the pinch, but […]
Some hills in the Genting Highland look like the most remote part of Malaysia. Cut off from electricity and good transportation facilities, these desolate hills are home to Nepali migrants, mainly undocumented workers, who work as farmhands to eke out a living. Forty-one-year-old Top Chalami is one such worker. A permanent resident of Daga-Tumdada in Baglung district, […]
Each flight that takes off from India to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has in it many Indian workers hoping to fulfil a dream: to make a decent living for themselves and their families. Tens of thousands of workers in the prime of their youth from across India make a beeline for jobs in West […]
In the past four months alone, Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police rescued 81 women from India and other countries. They were victims of trafficking. However, police could neither identify the agents involved nor make any arrests. The reason – none of the victims filed cases against their traffickers. The CIB receives information on Nepali women trafficking victims who are stranded in various Indian cities through various contacts […]