South Asian Migrant Crises

Kerala High Court issued notice to the Central and State governments on a petition seeking to set up a mechanism to assist NRIs who had lost their jobs abroad and had returned to India, to seek due com­ pensation. The petition exposes the preca­rious conditions of migrant workers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. 

• Employers, particularly construction com­ panies, have used the crisis as an opportun­ity to retrench masses of migrant labourers without paying them wages or allowances.
• South Asia­ Gulf migration corridor is among the largest in the world. South Asians account for nearly 15 million in the Gulf
• South Asian labour force forms the back­ bone of the Gulf economies, but has had to go knocking on doors for food and other bas­ ic necessities
• pandemic, the shutdown of companies, the tightening of borders, and the exploitative nature of the Kafala sponsor­ship system have all aggravated the miseries of South Asian migrant workers.
• They have no safety net, social security protection, wel­fare mechanisms, or labour rights, similar to conditions during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990,
• initial days of the lockdown, the Kerala government was re­quested to send regular medicines for lifes­tyle diseases. However, the suspension of flights caused an acute shortage of medi­cines, and exposed the frail medical insu­rance system in the GCC for these workers. Now, thousands have returned home empty­ handed from the host countries.
• Indians constitute the largest segment of the South Asian workforce. Gulf migration is predominantly a male­ driven phenomenon. A majority of the migrants are single men living in congested labour camps. They share rooms and toilets, to save earnings to send back home.
• COVID­19 spike in these la­bour camps has mainly been due to over­ crowded and unsanitary living conditions.
• most neglected segment turned out to be the migrant women domestic workers
• The Indian missions, with their inadequate administrative person­ nel, could not adequately cater to the needs of the migrants.
• In­dian government to repatriate the NRIs through the Vande Bharat Mission repatriated over 7.88 lakh NRIs from various destinations. Pakis­tan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, etc. have also been repatriating their citizens.
• countries of origin are now faced with the challenge of rehabilitating, reintegrating, and resettling these migrant workers.
• Indian government has an­ nounced ‘SWADES’ for skill mapping of citi­ zens returning from abroad, but implementation seems uncertain.
• Kerala has announced ‘Dream Kerala’ to utilise the multifaceted resources of the mi­ grants.
• Bangladesh has announced a special package for the resettlement of return mi­ grants which includes money on arrival, mo­ ney to launch self­employment projects, and compensation for the families of those who died abroad from COVID­19.
• Overseas Employment Corporation in Pakistan has come out with special programmes to up­ grade the skills of returnees.
• GCC countries, the movement for nationalisation of labour and the anti­migrant sentiment have peaked. Countries like Oman and Saudi Arabia have provided subsidies to private companies to prevent native lay­offs. However, the nation­alisation process is not going to be smooth gi­ ven the stigma attached to certain jobs and the influence of ‘royal sheikh culture’.
• countries that are sending migrant workers abroad are caught between the promotion of migration, on the one hand, and the protection of migrant rights in increasingly hostile countries receiving mi­ grants, on the other.

The need of the hour is a comprehensive migration management system for countries that send workers as well as those that receive them. The pandemic has gi­ ven us an opportunity to voice the rights of South Asian migrants and to bring the South Asia­ Gulf migration corridor within the am­bit of SAARC, the ILO, and UN conventions.