It is often said 'All that glitters is not gold' and this has never been truer. Expatriate workers in the shimmering capitals of the oil-rich Gulf emirates would vouch for this truism. While a lot of expats may be living a lavish life abroad and enjoying their personal and professional lives, we often hear horror stories from the ugly underbelly -- ill-treated workers, enslaved maids and life-consuming debt traps.
When it comes to Gulf countries, we often hear stories of expat workers landing blue-collar or low-paying jobs in poor working and living conditions. Their passports are often taken away by the agents who take them to the Gulf countries and they tend to get stranded there and are unable to return home. There are a number of incidents that have come up in which the workers' contracts have loopholes, due to which they often get tied down to their employers and companies under whom they suffer.
For instance, Qatar has on more than one occasion been pulled up for its treatment of migrant workers, especially the ones readying venues for the FIFA World Cup 2022.
Amnesty International had earlier said that migrant workers readying the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup have been facing "appalling treatment" for a while now.
The NGO for human rights had spoken to 132 contract workers readying the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha and 102 landscapers working at the Aspire Zone sports complex and they said that they have faced human right abuses of some form or the other, reported the Guardian. These abuses ranged from being forced to live in dingy and seedy homes to working in extremely high temperatures.
"My life here is like a prison. The work is difficult, we worked for many hours in the hot sun. When I first complained about my situation, soon after arriving in Qatar, the manager said, 'If you want to complain you can, but there will be consequences. If you want to stay in Qatar, be quiet and keep working.' Now I am forced to stay in Qatar and continue working," one of the workers had said.
This may be one of Qatar's stories but the latest one from Sharjah really makes you wonder if the lure of these cities and the seemingly lucrative job offers are real. A family living in the city in the United Arab Emirates planned mass suicide after their 19-year-old son suddenly died of an epileptic attack in August. Such was the grief that the family decided that they did not want to live anymore.
The incident came to light when a man jumped to his death from the seventh floor of their apartment on August 29 and the police reached the spot after being alerted by witnesses. When the police broke into the apartment, they found three women lying in blood with their wrists slashed. While the older woman aged 54 had died, the daughters aged 27 and 17 were rushed to the hospital after they showed some signs of life.
The family, originally from Sri Lanka, couldn't accept the son's death and hence had decided to end their lives. This was their second attempt after they gulped down various medicines in a bid to overdose. The man had reportedly been out of a job for some time, which led to the termination of their residency permit.
The son is said to have died of an epileptic attack, which makes many wonder why he wasn't taken to the hospital. And that leads us to the lethal combination of killer debt-traps and the alien status that a lot of families are entrapped in. It turns out that the family had no finances to fund the boy's medical expenses. They could not even report the death of the son to the police as they feared that it would be found that they were illegal residents.
Not just that, the family had also defaulted on a few bank loans, which would, in turn, result in the father being jailed. Now that the mother, as well as the father, are dead, the two sisters will be handed over to the Sharjah Police once they recover.
This is just one of the many similar cases that take place in the Gulf on a day to day basis, with a lot of them going unreported.
One of the cases that made news in India, Bengaluru in particular, about the horrors of the Middle East was the story of Ranjitha, who went to Saudi Arabia to work as a domestic help in March 2017. While it looked like a good move for the family, Ranjitha experienced such situations that will stay will her for the rest of her life.
A few days after she reached Saudi Arabia, Ranjitha called her husband Bhaskaran to talk about an ordeal that is sure to send a chill down the spine. "She told me that she was being treated badly, and forced to work without respite and given very little food," Bhaskaran told Bangalore Mirror. She was also not allowed to leave the house and was beaten up regularly.
"Ranjitha also told me that the living conditions were inhuman, and she was constantly being reminded that she was purchased for 3 lakh. I was shocked!" he added.
While Ranjitha had to work in a new house every week without food or money, she returned to India two months later and spoke to the daily about her nightmarish experience and the plight of other Indian expats in the Gulf.
"There are many other Indian women, who need help right now or they would die," she said. "They have been beaten and god knows how many other Indians were there; I was kept inside a hall, which had 30 of us. There are many women stuck there without money. If nothing is done, they will be in huge trouble."
She did manage to come back home and even had to pay about 1,000 Riyal, but there are millions of expats who continue to suffer. While they live in the Gulf countries as illegal residents, they can barely make it back home due to the lack of documents and finances. Is all the pain and suffering really worth it?
