Being humanitarian is a characteristic we all must-have. “Treat others how you want to be treated” an age-old statement that is so strong and so true yet
always taken for granted when it comes to exploitation in the Middle East. Are we treating the migrant workers how we want to be treated ourselves? If you are willing to do what’s necessary to stop this exploitation, then you first need to understand how exploitation takes place even when recruitment is taking place for A or B grade companies.
Out of almost 87% of the complaints received by Indian Migrants at Indian missions across nine countries, six Gulf countries, with nearly half of those are from UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. (ref. 1).
When you share your demand with a recruitment agency and if they conduct an interview in a location where they don’t have their own offices, chances are the demand is being shared with multiple sub-agents. These sub-agents, in order to increase the number of candidates, will share the demand with agents under them. Each agency will demand $150-$200 from the candidates. So if there are three involved, the candidates will pay about $600. Now, you may have a contractual agreement with your recruiting agency for the recruitment to be free for the workers (or a limited amount to be paid), but when workers end up paying money, the common answer is “money was not paid to us.” That’s not the point; money should never have been paid in the first place, isn’t that the point?
In case you allow your recruitment agency to charge, they will further charge $300-500, and in that case, the workers have to buy their own ticket, you can add another $300. In addition, there is trade testing and traveling cost, which may be about $200 or so. Medial and insurance will be about $150. The worker would have paid about $1900 while going to a fairly well-known construction company while going through a fairly reputed recruitment agent. With un-reputed agents, the amount maybe $3500.
Many times, candidates will arrive with different salary expectations, then what’s been discussed or perhaps OT has been massively exaggerated with the sole purpose of taking more money from them upfront. We have the ability to stop this.
Follow three steps, and you will stop your exploitation:
- Only conduct recruitment in locations where your recruitment partners have an office; this means no rental premises.
- During the trade, test, empower your workers with information. Share with them how much they are to pay if anything, and share your number, allowing them to call in case they are asked to pay more.
- Upon arrival, ask each worker what they have paid and take the issue up with your recruitment agency in a very serious way.
Author: Varun Khosla
MD, Dynamic Staffing Services
