Expat blues fuel suicide rate

Habib TOUMI

BAHRAIN: Ekanayaka Gnanawathie walked towards the airport gate, trying to hold back tears and clinging to the dignity she had fought for months to keep.

She was painfully torn between the elation of being reunited with her daughter within hours and the bitter disappointment of reaching home without any of the money she had dreamed of making in a Gulf country.

The world of rosy dreams and wonderful expectations that she conjured up in the remote village of Maho in her native Sri Lanka before coming to Bahrain were shattered by the excruciating physical and emotional abuse she had to endure for about 10 months.

The 34-year-old Sri Lankan domestic worker twice ran away from her sponsors.

But both times, the people whom she hoped would help, took her back to the house that inexorably turned into a prison.

When she was eventually rescued and offered a shelter at the Migrant Workers Protection Society (MWPS), she spoke openly of the torture. She was often slapped, kicked, dragged by the hair and pushed against the wall. She was often left without anything to eat and had to share scraps of food thrown to a pet cat.

Now, at least Ekanayaka is going home, hoping to resume her life with her 13-year-old daughter.

Hundreds of other expatriate workers return in cold coffins to grieving families in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

They may not have been abused like Ekanayaka, but, unable to deal with incessant financial demands, they preferred to commit suicide.

“It all starts with the dream of making a decent living in a Gulf country and of earning enough money to secure a rewarding life for the family. The mirage is too appealing to be dismissed,” Lateef, an Indian office boy, told Gulf News.

“Some Indians borrow up to BD1,200 [about Dh11,714] to pay their way to Bahrain where they were promised good jobs and golden opportunities to make a decent living.

“That is a lot of money, but they are made to believe that they will be able to make so much money that they will pay off their debts in no time. When they come here, they find that their new job is totally different from what they were promised. They also discover that the BD120 they were promised as [salary] is in fact only BD80 or 60.

“Of course they cannot go home because they are heavily in debt and they cannot fight back because they are afraid they would be kicked out of the country. So they take the job and pledge to themselves that they would work until the situation eases up.”

Lateef, a Keralite who considers himself “very fortunate” to receive his salary on time, said: “Most of the time, the situation does not ameliorate.

The boss does not pay the meagre salary on time, and the labourer starts borrowing money to survive in the country. He also needs to send some money to his family. The man is eventually trapped by the system and there is no escape. Some of the labourers cannot cope and eventually kill themselves, hoping to put an end to their agony.”

He points to a labourer working nearby under the scorching heat, beads of sweat covering his face, and carrying bags of bricks. “I would not be surprised if something terrible happened to that man.

He has not been paid for the last three months and he is forced to borrow from other people to buy something to eat. His grocer cannot give him any more credits and the poor man has no choice.

“He gets only BD40 a month .... It may be nothing for the contractor but for this man it is a matter of life and death,” Lateef said.

The man had requested some money or food. “Resilience is a good virtue in our culture, but not to the degree where people are pushed into deep frustration or desperate misery.”

Hamad, an Indian shopkeeper who has spent 25 years in Bahrain, said many expatriates commit suicide because of their commitments to their families.

“The dowry conditions are in themselves a terrible tragedy for Indians who have several daughters. They are obliged to work hard, swallow their dignity and never contest or speak back to keep their jobs ... so that they can pay for their daughters’ dowries ... the families back home think that those who emigrate to the Gulf are very rich and ... so they increase their demands,” the frail-looking man said.

Hamad swore that after 25 years in the Gulf, he had almost no money. “And believe me, I am not the spending type. I get BD80 a month and I have to pay for my accommodation and food from that amount. I also need to send money to my family back in India.

I call my wife once a week and I always time it so that I never exceed one minute as I cannot afford to spend more on telephone calls. Thank God, I have kept my sanity,” he said.

Sameer, his colleague in the Manama shop, said that some of the expatriates who committed suicide had borrowed money that they could not pay back.

“There are also those who indulge in drinking and in being with prostitutes.

... They cannot break out of the addiction and when they do realise that they were in deep debts, they commit suicide,” said the 30-year-old man.

However, for Ashok, the conditions in which many of the expatriates are forced to live are so appalling that many would contemplate suicide.

“Factory or construction workers live in small accommodations where they have no space or privacy ... and the situation is compounded by the incessant demands for money from families back home and the late pay,” he said.

“I have to walk three kilometres four times under the blazing sun. I start early so that I can open the shop, then I have to go back to the flat for the afternoon break. I then come back to re-open the shop and again walk back in the evening. It is not easy and I have to do that six days a week...

“Because of the little money I get I cannot afford to live near the area where the shop is located,” said Ashok.

Two suicides earlier this year at a six-lane highway near Manama have led to an outcry from activists and calls to pay more attention to the conditions of expatriates.

But suicides quickly turn a news event that with its share of fleeting attention and as a cartoon depicting a driver carrying an open coffin on his car, with the caption “Just in case someone throws himself from the bridge onto my car”.

“Rights organisations rarely dwell on the issue of suicides by expatriates,” a Western diplomat told Gulf News.

“There are activists who regularly send statements and reports to the press about the situation of migrant workers, warning of impeding dangers and highlighting abusive practices.

But these efforts do not ... have the anticipated ripple effect because not everyone is interested and the local and international communities do not show enough concern. For them, it is a matter between the employer and the employee,” the diplomat said.

Nabeel Rajab, vice-president of the now-dissolved Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, said in a statement to Gulf News: “Bahrainis and the embassy officials of the expatriates’ origin countries need to take responsibility for protecting the rights of these workers.

“Expatriate workers have been by and large ignored and excluded from the discourse on rights in Bahrain. For instance, migrant women live in difficult conditions. Upon arriving in the country, they are subjected to mandatory health testing related to sexual and reproductive health without consent or counselling.”

In April, he launched a scathing attack on a motion tabled at the Lower House to ban migrant bachelors from residential areas.

“To relocate labour camps to industrial areas ... appears as the first step towards building a ghetto where migrant workers will be segregated from Bahraini residents,” he said.

Economists estimate that about 10 million expatriates and three million relatives live in the region. Foreigners constitute more than 75 per cent of the population in two Gulf Cooperation Council countries and about 40 per cent in the others.