Mr. Rafeek Ravuther, the director of Center for Indian Migrants Studies (CIMS), India, discussed the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on migrant workers and policy responses to the pandemic, in the virtual panel discussion held on the topic ‘Migration Management During COVID-19: Best Practices from Latin America, Africa and Asia’, hosted by the Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism[ GRFDT] on 28 July 2020.
Mr. Ravuther began by stating that the pandemic was new to both origin and destination countries and they were facing the dual issues of battling COVID-19 on one hand and addressing the policy related issues regarding the impact of the pandemic on the other. Mr. Ravuther also shared the experience of civil society organizations in formulating responses to the pandemic induced crisis.
Governmental Response to Pandemic
While the pandemic spread through China and Italy in the initial stages, the first Asian country to enforce strict lockdown measures was Philippines, followed by Malaysia. This prompted the South Asian countries like India to impose nationwide lockdowns to restrict mobility. This was followed up by other Gulf countries as well, which hosts large number of migrant workers.
Mr. Ravuther informed that, from the second week of March, these countries were following a dual strategy – first was to mitigate the spread of virus by enforcing lockdown, carrying out testing and imposing quarantine measures; second was the setting up of policies to deal with health and economic impacts of the pandemic.
But repatriation of migrant workers from host countries was completely ignored initially. The embassies of the source country and the governments of the host countries, both delayed their responses resulting in migrants being stranded in host countries.
Channeling the Right Information
Mr. Ravuther mentioned that a lot of “panic news” was spreading everywhere in the wake of pandemic, especially concerning the effect of the pandemic on the migrant workers in the Gulf countries. With workers staying in crowded labor camps, the challenge was to counsel and assure the migrants that the respective governments shall be taking care of them.
The civil society organizations of Kerala, which has around 3.5 million migrant workers in the Gulf countries, took up this challenge and well addressed these concerns, thereby mitigating what otherwise could have been a panic situation. Emphasizing on the role of technology in tackling the migrant issues following the pandemic, Mr. Ravuther explained how social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, along with webinars and video conferences were used by civil society organizations as well as governments in these countries to hold conversations with migrant groups, which greatly helped in connecting with these people and containing the panic amongst them.
Repatriation of Migrant Workers
Mr. Ravuther highlighted some of the initiatives taken by the Indian government to repatriate the migrants stranded in destination countries during the pandemic. One of the most important such missions was the Vande Bharat Mission, through which the Government of India engaged Air India flights to bring back the migrants stranded in destination countries. Warships were sent to Maldives to bring back Indian migrant workers stranded there. As a result, more than 7,00,000 migrant workers were successfully repatriated during the last three months. Another practice highlighted by Mr. Ravuther was the creation of a database regarding the skills of returned migrant workers through the SWADES scheme, which shall further aid the process of repatriation. Similar steps were taken across Asia.
“The major drawback (of COVID-19 policy response) was that the returning migrants, especially the blue-collar workers, were never given a chance to raise their issues…since COVID-19 caused job cuts, wage cuts and lots of vulnerabilities for the undocumented and even the documented migrant workers”: Mr. Rafeek Ravuther
Mr. Ravuther raised the concern that while these initiatives were successful in physically transporting the migrants back to home safely, the other concerns of the migrant workers such as job loss, wage thefts, and enhanced vulnerabilities of the documented and undocumented laborers in the wake of pandemic, were not addressed. He lamented that neither the governments of the destination countries nor that of origin countries gave a thought to effectively addressing these concerns of migrant workers.
Mr. Ravuther concluded his address by asserting that the lack of polices to address the wage thefts that happened during COVID-19 is an important concern that needs to be immediately addressed by formulating and executing a transitional justice mechanism.
Megha Rangaraj, the writer is an under graduate student with Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune, India. She is an avid advocate for the emancipation of women and passionate about social issues. She can be found on twitter handle @MeghaRangaraj