While the pandemic casts a heavy shadow over the livelihood of the myriad number of families domestically, it also leaves an impact on the lives of labourers working in Gulf countries as over seven lakhs people have returned from six oil-rich countries during the lockdown.
While revealing this in the parliament on Thursday, the Minister of External Affairs Dr.S.Jaishankar said, “Pandemic whiplash drove over 7 lakh labourers to home from six different gulf countries under Vande Bharat Mission. However, most of them have managed to return back to their positions post witnessing a significant drop in covid-19 cases.
United Arab Emirates (UAE), the world’s most thriving financial hub in the world stood top among the six gulf countries with the most number of returnees. Out of a total number of 7,16,662 migrant labourers, flock back to country during pandemic 3,30,058 are from UAE followed by Saudi Arabia (1,37,900), Kuwait (97,802), Oman (72,259), Qatar (51,190) and Bahrain (27,453).
ALSO READ: RTI filed on human trafficking to Gulf
“Buttressed with the support of Indian Community Welfare Fund and community association, the Indian missions in the Gulf countries managed to extend all possible support to the Indians struck under the pandemic overseas. This includes the expenses of airfares, accommodation, and emergency medical needs,” he explained.
However, the official figure of gulf returnees might be much lesser than the actual number as there is no appropriate mechanism or system to include each and every labourer who flocks back to the country unable to withstand the whiplash of the pandemic.
“The official system talks only about the registered returnees sans the number of employees working or living in gulf countries for years without official recognition. In the absence of appropriate support from the government they are simply counting on doing different odd jobs for the survival of their families back in Hyderabad and other parts of the country,” argued Syed Shoukat Ali, a community activist.
“There are hundreds of migrants who shares off gulf countries post-pandemic and most of them are not yet returned due to recurrent restricts and other reasons,” he said adding that “The distressed migrants will come out of their misery only if the situation makes it possible for them to return back to their positions in Gulf countries.”
