Kuwait ramps up deportation of Asian workers

More than 250 Bangladeshi workers have been sent home in the past few days and hundreds more will follow after last week's protests over labor rights.

Kuwait City, Kuwait (August 2, 2008) - More than 250 Bangladeshi workers have been deported on specially chartered flights out of Kuwait and hundreds more are expected to be sent home in the next few days.

The deportation follows violent demonstrations and a three-day strike last week by South Asian laborers demanding better pay and work conditions in this oil-rich Gulf state.

What began as an internal dispute involving one company over the non-payment of salaries, flared into a general strike by thousands of Asian cleaning workers calling for a complete overhaul of the industry, in which some of the poorest people in world pay as much as $3,500 to middlemen in Bangladesh to secure jobs in Kuwait. Upon arrival, however, the promised salary often shrinks by more than half, as a host of expenses for visa processing and health insurance are deducted from their salaries.

"In Bangladesh, they say they'll pay 50 Kuwaiti Dinars ($188), but the company only gives KD 20 a month ($75)," says Nazrul (not his real name), standing outside the dilapidated seven-story apartment complex in the south of Kuwait City where he and several thousand other Bangladeshi workers live.

A Bangladeshi diplomatic source says that contracts are agreed to in Bangladesh but then other papers in Arabic are signed upon arrival in Kuwait.

"They are signing for their ill-fortune," he says. "They are signing many papers they do not understand."

The same diplomatic source explained that the sub-contractors who employ these workers in various government ministries receive up to KD 140 ($536) for each employee per month but only KD 20 ($75) is passed on to the workers - and nothing if the workers fall ill.

More than 200,000 Bangladeshis live in this country of 3.2 million, where foreigners account for two-thirds of the population.

In the recent riots, protesters destroyed cars and other property. Several company representatives trying to convince the men to end their strike were severely beaten - one man was thrown several floors from an apartment building and is in critical condition.

Police finally broke up the protests using tear gas and batons, arresting up to a thousand protesters both here and at other locations in the country.

Labor movements for foreign workers are non-existent in Kuwait and in the past, worker representatives have been deported for organizing strikes.

While the plight of poorly paid Asian workers in Kuwait and across the Gulf region is well-documented, it has been exacerbated of late by recent sharp increases in the price of food. Rice - the staple food of most lower-income Asians - has more than doubled this year. Also, the falling value of the US dollar has eroded the amount of money these workers can send to their families, who are often entirely dependent on remittances from sons and daughters working across the Gulf region.

Inside the fetid, crumbling apartment complex, Nazrul says that police had barged into the building and summarily arrested hundreds of men, many of whom were on strike but not protesting at the time, pointing to a door the police officers had kicked in.

On Tuesday, a Kuwait Ministry for Labour and Social Affairs spokesperson announced that it would meet some of the workers demands -such as introducing a minimum monthly wage of KD 40 ($150) and fining companies who break contract agreements.

But similar promises were made following protests in 2005.

Three years later, Nazrul and his fellow workers are still waiting for a change.

[By Raymond Barrett]

257 Bangladeshis deported for iqama violations

RIYADH (Monday 4 August 2008): As part of an intensified effort to rid Saudi Arabia of illegal workers, the Kingdom has deported 257 Bangladeshi workers over the last seven days.

Those sent home include 139 workers who were not given exit passes by the embassy. "According to deportation practice, workers without passports are given exit passes to leave Saudi Arabia, but in some cases Saudi officials don't provide necessary information about the stranded workers, which creates problems in terms of issuing exit papers," said M. Haroonor Rasheed, labor counselor at the Bangladesh Embassy.

The workers were from deportation centers in Riyadh and Dammam, where they had been stranded for quite some time, Rasheed said, adding that the embassy issues around 600 exit passes each month.

Asked whether the Saudi government arranged a special flight to deport the workers, Rasheed said, "They were flown on board different airlines and in most of the cases, the cost of tickets were borne by the Saudi government ... This mass deportation is not related to any plan to get rid of our workers; in fact, it is a routine affair."

He also appealed to Saudi officials to regularly inform the Bangladeshi Embassy about illegal workers to enable it to issue exit passes. He blamed Saudi employers and Bangladeshi recruiting agents for problems faced by the workers.

"The nonpayment of salary and the soaring cost of recruitment are major problems currently faced by our immigrant workers," he said.

"A group of 60 Bangladeshi workers came to the embassy yesterday protesting against the local Al-Moragen Contracting Est., which has not paid them their salaries for the last few months, leaving them on the brink of hunger," he said.

"We immediately referred the case to the Labor Court, which summoned the sponsor and gave instructions to settle the dispute ... Local employers, in a substantial number of cases, fail to pay even the minimum salary of SR550," he said.

According to a report, which quotes an immigration official at Dhaka's Zia International Airport, a total of 224 workers, including 139 from Saudi Arabia and 85 from Kuwait, were sent back on Saturday.

"Last Tuesday, the Kingdom deported 118 Bangladeshis on charges of violating Saudi laws by overstaying, or not having passports or work permits," said the report. It added that a total of 313 workers have so far been deported from Kuwait.

The deportation from Kuwait started after a large number of Asian workers, mostly Bangladeshis, went on strike and damaged property demanding pay rise and better working conditions. The Kuwaiti authorities arrested some 800 Bangladeshis for damaging vehicles and attacking the police.