On July 13, 2020, four months short of his 24th year of living and working in Saudi Arabia, Anil Kumar took a flight to India and returned to his hometown of Kollam in Kerala. COVID-19 had suddenly made him jobless. He had gone to Saudi Arabia in 1997, as a young man of 23, with many hopes, like numerous others who took off to the ‘Gulf’ – as Malayalis call all of the Middle East– for better job opportunities. When he returned, he only had with him the promise of his employer, that all of the benefits accrued over the last 23 years will be sent to him in 60 days. He was losing his precious job, but Anil had felt secure in the thought that his money – Rs 15 lakh in all – would reach him in days. A year later, he says he is still waiting.
“More than 250 Malayalis were sent back home from the same company. All of us waited for 60 days after coming back to our homes. When we didn’t get the promised arrears, we contacted the company. At first, they asked for a week’s time. A week later, however, they stopped responding,” says Anil, who worked as a carpenter and later a carpenter foreman in the same firm for 23 years.
A Malayali tycoon was the managing director of the company, Anil says, and the workers who lost their jobs and their pending payments tried different ways to contact him. The man was allegedly unreachable or unresponsive. They wrote letters of complaints to the NORKA Roots – Department of Non-Resident Keralites Affairs, to Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) and state ministers. One letter was even sent to the Prime Minister’s office.
“There was not even an acknowledgement from the PM’s office. The MLAs and the ministers all say they will try to talk to this Malayali director. But the director told them he has had nothing to do with this Gulf firm since 2014,” Anil says.
Dejected, some of them approached the Centre for Indian Migrant Studies (CIMS), a non-governmental organisation working for the rights of migrant workers (from India).
A few days ago, CIMS released a study it did after surveying 397 migrant workers who returned from the Gulf countries and who had documents to prove wage theft. This wage theft could be in the form of unpaid benefits or pending salaries.
Initially, CIMS had surveyed 3,345 workers– largely returnees and those stranded abroad – only 11.86% (397 persons) had supporting documents for wage theft. Just from these 397 persons, they estimated that an amount of Rs 62 crore (Rs 62,58,73,366 to be exact) was deprived. This would mean that an average of Rs 15 lakh was ‘thieved’ off each person. The highest amount a person lost among those surveyed is Rs 19,26,217 (Rs 19 lakh).
“The study began when we partnered with the Migrant Forum in Asia – an advocacy group for migrant workers based in the Philippines – in their campaign Justice for Wage Theft. We had done a repatriation survey even earlier and realised that many workers returned to Kerala without getting their pending dues. The objective of the new study is to bring about urgent justice mechanisms for migrant returnees as well as workers stranded abroad,” says Parvathi Devi K, migrant workers activist at CIMS, who did the study.
A case was filed by CIMS at the Kerala High Court and the reply they got was that the existing apparatus should be sufficient to fight for the claims. “As per the existing system, an NRI returnee can file a case (in the country they returned from) by giving power of attorney to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) which would arrange a lawyer in the country, through the Indian embassy. The fact is, legal options for a returnee are very vague,” Parvathi adds.
In the study, CIMS further applied the results to all the migrant workers who returned from the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries during the pandemic, due to job loss – nearly 11 lakh people (10,98,334 to be precise) as per NORKA reports. If 11.86% (as per the original survey) were affected by wage theft, and each of these persons had at least Rs 1 lakh as pending dues, it would still amount to a large sum of money. Based on the math, that is Rs 1 lakh for 130,262 returnees, which comes to 13k million rupees. And Rs 1 lakh might be a huge under-estimation.
Wilson who has been working for 30 years in Dubai, and the last 14 years in a firm there, is another migrant returnee with lakhs of rupees in pending dues. He hadn't been paid salary for 15 months and after COVID-19 struck, was made to go on leave for three months. "By the time the three months were over, the firm had closed. I still stayed in my room for several months with food that came to us from charity groups and the labour court. Finally in March this year, I came back home to Irinjalakuda. I am 66 now, I can't find another job here, though I am trying," Wilson says.
For the first 15-and-a-half years, Wilson worked as a photographer in Dubai. The last half of his Dubai life was spent as a camp officer in a firm. "The company had started having problems since 2014-15 when salaries became pending. But because of our trust in the firm, we had stuck on," Wilson says.
A few of them from the same firm have filed a case through the Indian Embassy, and have had to pay for 10% of the expenses from their pocket. Wilson says he can claim only two-third of the losses he suffered, as certain countries will not allow labour complaints to be filed after a year has passed, but this would still amount to more than Rs12 lakh.
“At least 1.5 million people had returned in a massive reverse migration from the Gulf countries during the pandemic. Among them, a large chunk of people reported a loss of employment as the reason for coming back. The wage theft they face could be in the form of unpaid end of service benefits. Employees could be unpaid, low-paid or partially-paid. We have formed a team to collect information of the returnees to take it up with the respective Indian embassy of the country they came from. Through the embassy we contact the foreign employer that had employed them and owe them money,” says Harikrishnan Namboothiri K, Chief Executive Officer at NORKA Roots.
The returnees haven’t stayed quiet all these months. Many have formed a WhatsApp group to discuss their problems, and they planned a protest at the Secretariat in February. “But on the way, our bus was stopped by the police and we were arrested,” Anil Kumar says.
The CIMS too made all possible interventions. "We have filed a complaint with MADAD (Consular Services Management System) by the Ministry of External Affairs in September 2020 with a group case of 500 people. It is only now that these people are even getting calls verifying if their complaints are genuine. The problem is some countries like Saudi Arabia do not allow labour complaints after a period of one year. This time has already lapsed for many returnees," Parvathy says.
Right now they are working with organisations in other states to release a national report on wage theft. Surveys in Tamil Nadu and Telangana indicate that workers from there had similar experiences as their Kerala counterparts.
The wage theft would also hugely impact Kerala, a state that depends heavily on the money sent home by non-residents. The CIMS study says that 2.4 million non-resident Keralites send about 15 billion dollars home, annually. This is "more than a quarter of Kerala’s State Gross Domestic Product and 1.4 times more than the internal revenue income of the government according to Kerala State Planning Board," says the study.
Among the CIMS recommendations are creating a data bank of returnee migrants and the wage theft they’ve faced. At present, there is a column in the NORKA records for job loss, but this could also include reports of wage theft. The CIMS also asks that the existing mechanism for filing cases through the MEA should be made accessible as certain countries do not allow cases after a year of the incident. It urges the state and Union government to ensure perpetrators of Indian origin (like the director of Anil's company) are held accountable for the wage theft. Further, the government could sign bilateral agreements with destination countries to address these issues.
Those who have complaints of pending wages, benefits can email NORKA at addlsec.norka@kerala.gov.in or call their toll free number 1800 425 393.