Tricked and Trapped: Human Trafficking in the Middle East, ‎pdf 4.1 MB

If the employer refuses to release a migrant worker from his contract, the
worker is left in a difficult predicament: either he will have to agree to
compensate the employer financially in order to terminate the contract,
or he will have to leave without the employer’s consent. As the owner of a
garment factory in Jordan said: “To terminate the contract, the worker must
give one to three months’ notice and reimburse the cost of the residency
permit and visa. As most who want to leave cannot pay this amount, we let
them go back.” Better Work Jordan, a partnership between the ILO and the
International Finance Corporation, noted in its latest compliance report one
case of an employer refusing to allow a worker to leave upon the expiration of
the labour contract until a replacement was found, and two cases of factories
refusing to allow workers to resign with reasonable notice. 263
Some migrant workers decide to take the risk of leaving their employers
without an official release in order to work as freelancers. If a worker absconds,
the employer will report him to the authorities, which in turn will issue an
exit ban on the individual and impose a fine that the migrant will have to
pay in order to leave the country. “We don’t have the option to leave our
sponsor because it is very difficult to find another one,” explained Egyptian
construction workers in Lebanon. “If you leave, you become illegal and will
have problems with the authorities who will detain you.” The risks of running
away are compounded by the intraregional cooperation arrangements among
the GCC countries, which now ensure that a migrant worker banned from
one country will also be banned from the others. An Indian electrician
interviewed in Kuwait said that workers understood that running away
“effectively means you will never be able to work again in Kuwait or another
GCC country, and the economic opportunities are here”.
Box 3.21. Impossibility of leaving
Egyptians are considered the second largest community after the Indian community.
Hundreds of them work under the mercy of a Kuwaiti sponsor without
any guarantees that secure their rights as workers. The sponsor may, under any
circumstances, lay-off the worker and throw him on the street no matter how
difficult the worker’s conditions might be. In such a case, the worker only has
two choices. Either to become a fugitive violating the residency laws because of
his incapability to pay his residence fees to a sponsor, or to face deportation to
his country, this is always an unacceptable solution for them.
Akhbarelyum: “Egyptians in Kuwait: We suffer from injustice and our embassy
ignores our problems”, 8 June 2012, http://www.akhbarelyum.com/12501/ [20
June 2012].
263
Better Work: Better Work Jordan: Garment industry 4th compliance synthesis report
(Geneva, ILO/IFC, 14 Nov. 2012), p. 25.
119