Up to 10,000 Asian migrant workers die in the Gulf every year: Report
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Campaigners consider that not enough is being done to avoid deaths and that the causes of death are not being probed appropriately.
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Up to 10,000 Asian migrant workers die in the Gulf every year: Report
Up to 10,000 migrant workers from south and south-east Asia die every year in the Gulf region, according to a report by a group of human rights organizations.
More than half of the deaths were reported with no explanation, said the report, and are recorded as due to “natural causes” or “cardiac arrest”. However, the Gulf states are failing properly to investigate why a large number of workers are dying.
Vital signs of migrant deaths in the Gulf have been compiled by NGOs from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and the Philippines, and FairSquare Projects, a London-based migrant rights organization.
Heat and humidity, air pollution, overwork, abusive working conditions, inadequate occupational health and safety measures, psychosocial stress, and hypertension are among health problems faced by low-paid migrant workers in the Gulf. Long hours of manual labor in hot weather can cause heat stress, which can lead to organ damage, according to the paper.
Read more: Saudi Arabia Whitewashes Its Human Rights Abuses with Entertainment - HRW
A few years back in 2017, after being instructed to enter a sewerage line without an oxygen cylinder, a 37-year-old from Bangladesh, Julhas Uddin, died. However, no investigation was conducted and his death certificate just stated that his "heart and breathing stopped."
Up to 30 million migrants working in the Arab Gulf states – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait. About 80% 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 significant condemnation of worker exploitation – particularly about Qatar's preparations to host the World Cup this year – Gulf governments have mostly resisted structural labor reforms, and origin states have been unable to provide adequate protection for their nationals overseas.
The governments of the six Gulf countries did not respond to requests for comment.
