10k Asian migrants die in Gulf a year

As many as 10,000 migrant workers from south and south-east Asia die every year in the Gulf countries, according to a report by a group of human rights organisations.

More than half of the deaths are unexplained, said the report, and are commonly recorded as due to “natural causes” or “cardiac arrest”. But Gulf states are failing properly to investigate why so many migrant workers are dying. The report, Vital Signs: The deaths of migrants in the Gulf, has been compiled by NGOs from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and the Philippines, and FairSquare Projects, a London-based migrant rights organisation. Low-paid migrant workers in the Gulf are exposed to a series of risks to their health, including heat and humidity, air pollution, overwork and abusive working conditions, poor occupational health and safety practices, psychosocial stress and hypertension. Long hours of manual labour in searing temperatures can result in heat stress, which can lead to organ damage, the report said. Julhas Uddin, a 37-year-old man from Bangladesh, died in Saudi Arabia in October 2017 when a supervisor instructed him to enter a sewerage line without an oxygen cylinder. No investigation was conducted, and his death certificate states the cause as “heart and breathing stopped”. There are about 30 million migrants working in the Arab Gulf states – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. 

About 80pc of these are employed in low-paid sectors such as construction, hospitality and domestic work, and come from poorer countries in Asia and Africa. “Despite the Gulf states’ practical dependence on their migrant workforces and the bolstering impact migrant worker remittances have on the economies of their homelands, both origin and Gulf states have for too long paid inadequate attention to ensuring they return home in good health,” said Anurag Devkota, a lawyer from Nepal’s Law and Policy Forum for Social Justice. “As a result far too many do not return home at all, or do so in coffins or body bags.” Despite widespread criticism of worker exploitation – notably in relation to Qatar’s preparations to host this year’s World Cup – the Gulf states have largely avoided structural labour reforms, and origin states have been unable to ensure proper protection for their nationals abroad. The governments of the six Gulf countries did not respond to requests for comment.

Have things improved for Qatar’s World Cup migrant workers?

When Qatar won the bid to host the World Cup in 2010, the triumphant Gulf state unveiled plans to host the most spectacular of all World Cup tournaments and began an ambitious building plan of state-of-the-art stadiums, luxury hotels and a sparkling new metro. Yet, over the next decade, the brutal conditions in which hundreds of thousands of migrant workers toiled in searing heat to build Qatar’s World Cup vision has been exposed, with investigations into the forced labour , debt bondage and worker death toll causing international outrage. In an attempt to quell the mounting criticism, Qatar announced sweeping labour reforms in 2019. This included ending kafala, the system that made it illegal for migrant workers to change jobs or leave the country without their employer’s permission, effectively trapping workers who were being exploited and abused. Other reforms included the first minimum wage for migrant workers in the region and harsher penalties for companies that did not comply with the new labour laws. When they came into force in September 2020, the reforms were met with wide acclaim. Fifa called them groundbreaking. The UN said they marked a new era. An international trade union referred to them as a gamechanger. Even human rights groups, long critical of Qatar’s record on labour rights, gave them a cautious welcome. Yet more than 40 migrant workers who talked to the Guardian in Qatar in September and October this year say that for them, nothing much has changed. 

Despite the International Labour Organisation (ILO) claiming that more than 200,000 workers have changed employers since the new laws were rolled out, the Guardian met only one worker – a young man from Kenya – who had managed to leave his job. His experience spoke strongly of the potential empowerment the new laws could bring to worker’s lives. When he first arrived in Qatar, he was earning 625 rials (£127) a month as a construction worker. Now he is working for a logistics company with a salary almost three times higher. “I’m able to send much more money home. Now I can’t complain,” he says. Yet everyone else the Guardian spoke to who wanted to change jobs says it is difficult or impossible to do so. They allege their companies are simply ignoring the new laws. Some say their bosses threaten to impose fines or hold back wages if they try to change jobs, and that they are living so close to destitution this could be catastrophic. Other workers say employers refuse to sign resignation letters or issue “no-objection certificates”, seemingly unaware that neither are required under the reformed labour code.  “They threaten us, saying they will deduct the cost of our room and bedding from our salary and refuse to pay end-of-service benefits if we try to leave,” one Indian security guard says. “We are still under their control.” A Kenyan security guard says: “I found another job but when I went to my company, they refused to release me. I waited three months and they refused again.” He says he could go to a labour court to fight his case but would have to pay for transport that he cannot afford and take time off work that his company will not allow.