Plight of migrant workers worsens as crises multiply

BEIRUT — Long before the pandemic struck, they lived and worked in conditions that rights groups called exploitative — low wages, long hours, no labour law protections.

Now, some 250,000 registered migrant laborers in Lebanon — maids, garbage collectors, farm hands and construction workers — are growing more desperate as a crippling economic and financial crisis sets in, coupled with coronavirus restrictions.

Lebanon’s unprecedented foreign currency crisis means that many migrants have not been paid for months or that the value of salaries is down by more than half. Others have lost their jobs after employers dumped them on the streets or outside their embassies.

“We are invisible,” said Banchi Yimer, an Ethiopian former domestic worker who founded a group that campaigns for domestic workers’ rights in Lebanon. “We don’t even exist for our governments, not just the Lebanese government.”

In just three days, she said, 20 Ethiopian domestic workers were abandoned by their sponsors and left outside the embassy. A photo she posted shows women with as little as a backpack or a purse, lined up along the walls of the embassy — some sitting on the floor.

The pandemic delivered just the latest blow to a Lebanese economy, already devastated by a financial crisis brought on by decades of corruption and mismanagement. In recent weeks, the Lebanese pound, pegged to the dollar for more than two decades, has lost 60 per cent of its value against the dollar and prices of basic goods soared. Unemployment has risen to 35 per cent. —

We are invisible. We don’t even exist for our governments, not just the Lebanese government Banchi Yimeer

Ethiopian domestic worker