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Unlike his colleagues, Hari was fortunate enough to get a new task to be offered to him in Singapore, but said his old company had refused to move his paint permit.
On August 11, the company sent him on a repatriation flight back home to Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India.
“I would have liked to stay in Singapore, find a task and transfer my paint permit to a new employer,” said Hari, 29, who had painted as a manager and earned about $1,200 a month.
Migrants like Hari, who have lost their jobs, are debated between staying in search of paintings or returning to their home countries.
The Indian High Commission in Singapore said that “17,000 Indians have been evacuated on 115 flights,” most of them to the cities of Tiruchirappalli, Coimbatore, Madurai and Chennai in Tamil Nadu in the past five months.
The High Commission said that another 15,000 people are now waiting for their adventure and that new registrations are taking place every day.
But while India and Bangladesh are grapping with collapsed economies and unprecedented unemployment, top expatriate staff are reluctant to leave and those who are already at home are eager to return abroad.
Nearly 300,000 of the 2.5 million Tamils working in other countries returned to Tamil Nadu in five months.
In Kerala, another major migrant carrier, only 254,000 expatriates returned, out of some 500,000 who had registered first for repatriation.
MSIrudaya Rajan, a migration expert at the Center for Development Studies and a member of the Kerala Working Group for Expats, said: “We expect more people to return home until December, but many of those who have gone backwards panicked through Covid-19 are already lamenting this.
“Because they don’t have many livelihoods in their places of origin, returnees spend their savings.There’s a big cry for returning abroad.
Jobs are scarce in India; gross domestic product through a record 23.9% between April and June, and at least 19 million others lost wage jobs in the formal economy after closing.
Raj S, a 45-year-old structured device operator who worked in Singapore for 14 years and returned to Tirupattur in Tamil Nadu in July, now says his farm’s source of income in the house is low and debts are rising.
“I left because I was so afraid to put Covid in the bedrooms, but I have to go back one way or another,” he says.
He had spent 15 days in quarantine in Singapore leaving, and seven days after landing in India.
Returning abroad is confusing and costly. Few staff members can repay firm hiring fees.
Even with a job, Hari said he will have to pay $150 for a flight, about $300 for documents and at least $200 for the Covid-19 swab and quarantine upon arrival in Singapore.
Returning students will be required to pay for their tests. However, Singapore’s borders remain closed to visitors, with the exception of safe pass holders from South Korea, Brunei, China, Malaysia and New Zealand.
Some even face discrimination on the part of locals because they are concerned that they will contract the virus.
Shipyard engineer Anisur Rahman, who worked in Singapore for 8 years, returned home to Tangail District, Bangladesh, on February 26 for what was intended to be a month-long vacation.
But the pandemic struck and the 42-year-old man couldn’t come back.
He waited to return to the paintings at his employer’s request, but listened to them.
Last month, he learned on the Ministry of Labor website – his employer told him – that his paint permit had been revoked, leaving him unemployed.
“I was hoping to come back, but now I’m going to have to place paintings here in my country,” said Rahman, discouraged, “I even used everything I’d saved.”
More than 95,000 Bangladeshi have returned home from other countries since April this year after wasting their jobs.
One of them is Iqbal Hossain, 42, who works as a tailor in Kuwait.
His leave expired in January, but his employer did not apply to renew it.
Hossain then spent several weeks under strict lockdown and 20 days in a government camp for others without permission.
However, he returned to Bangladesh in May as part of an amnesty program.
“I’ve been fighting ever since, surviving with borrowed money from others,” he said, adding that access to a government monetary program for migrants like him has been complicated by heavy bureaucracy.
He added that he had to open a small grocery store.
Many authorized manual employees say their fees are paid.
Marina Sultana, director of programs for the Dhaka-based Refugee and Migrant Movement Research Unit, asked: “Don’t employers have a duty to their staff when a crisis breaks out? Or are they abandoning their defenseless in a situation even more defenseless? ” ? “
The main countries of origin of migrants, such as India and Bangladesh, deserve to advocate together to better protect the rights of their workers and also identify potential labour markets to exercise returnees accordingly, Sultana said.”An unemployed migrant will not feel safe until there is solid work.”
“A cleaner in Singapore or Dubai doesn’t paint like a cleaner in India, that’s a reality,” Rajan said.
He advised that before stay-at-home returnees “burn their economies and sink into a deep currency crisis,” states inspire them to invest in small businesses that also create jobs.
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