French report: harsh conditions for foreign workers in the Emirates
A report by the French News Agency highlighted the harsh conditions experienced by foreign workers in the Emirates in the aftermath of the Coronavirus crisis and the economic repercussions that Abu Dhabi met with arbitrary measures that constitute separation and deportation.
The French agency told the story of an Indian worker named Nooruddin who was placed when his nine colleagues in his residence were infected with the new Coronavirus, on a bus that headed towards a quarantine complex in the Emirates, to join many expatriate workers who face an uncertain future.
The UAE depends on millions of foreigners, most of whom are from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, and many of them live in headquarters and camps far from the skyscrapers and commercial centers that the country is famous for.
But the rapid spread of the virus, coupled with the decline in economies affected by the collapse in oil prices, left many workers, including patients without work or salary, to send to their families as they usually do at the end of each month.
“There is nothing in my room except for a small bed,” said Nooruddin, a contract editor from the Indian state of Kerala, who had been hospitalized before being transferred across the desert to the headquarters of the stone. I have to share the bathroom with twenty to thirty people.”
“I don’t know if I should feel happy or sad,” he added. There is no internet (Wi-Fi), not even a TV. But the situation in my room (his residence) was even worse. ” Despite a strict curfew in effect for weeks, the UAE is still reporting increasing numbers of COVID-19 infections.
In an attempt to reduce injury rates, workers in Gulf cities were moved to temporary housing, while the authorities set up collective examination centers, while drones overflew the overcrowded areas to urge them and in several languages not to congregate.
The UAE is more than publicly demanding the governments of the countries from which workers hail to help return them to their countries, after many of them became without work and wages, amid a near-complete halt in commercial traffic due to measures to curb the spread of the virus.
By April 20, officials said, some 22,900 foreign nationals were returned on 127 flights from closed airports. But India, which has about 3.2 million citizens living in the UAE alone, considered that returning and quarrying millions of citizens would be a security and logistical nightmare.
The Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, Abulkalam Abdul Moneim, said that his country had agreed, albeit reluctantly, to take back thousands of its citizens to avoid punitive measures that the Gulf states might take against them in the future.
He explained, “If we do not return them to their homes (…) (the Gulf countries) will not provide jobs for our citizens once the situation improves.”
He added that thousands of workers without valid papers and hundreds of prisoners would return in stages on planes, including a flight that took off from Saudi Arabia last week.
