People s Planning showed another world is possible, says Thomas Isaac thehindu.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thehindu.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Like millions before him, Manoj migrated from the southwestern Indian state of Kerala to the Gulf in search of work in 2019. He found a job at a construction company in Bahrain that described itself as a “regional leader”. The pay, at 240 dinars (£577) a month, was far more than he could expect to find at home.
Last February, as cases of COVID-19 soared in Bahrain, the company stopped paying Manoj and two dozen other employees. When they complained, their employer stopped providing food and accommodation, too.
Manoj and his colleagues refused to leave and continued to demand their unpaid wages. “Once they realised we will not back off, they offered to give us back our passports and pay for our return to Kerala under the condition that we give up our unpaid wages,” he said. They rejected the offer. “They cut off our electricity after that.”
Pedagogue of the oppressed indiatimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from indiatimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a whopping 8.7 lakh expatriates from Kerala to return home, most of them from the Gulf, since last May with a majority of 5.67 lakh citing job loss as the reason for it, according to official data. The data from the Non-Resident Keralites Affairs (NORKA) department as of Thursday also showed that 1,11,151 of the 13,27,330 Keralites who came back from other parts of the country also cited loss of jobs as the reason for their return. The second biggest reason cited by the returnees (2.08 lakh) was their job visas. The rest include senior citizens, or children, and family members of expats.