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هذه الصفحة غير متوفرة باللغة العربية وهي معروضة باللغة English

المقال

20 مارس 2021

الكاتب:
The Daily Star

Migrant Workers In Lebanon: Caught in the crunch

In the space of two years, Rubel Miah has seen the value of his wages at his job in Beirut plummet to one-fifth of what he could earlier convert to US dollars and send home to his family. His wife, elderly parents, and siblings back home in Brahmanbaria's Nabinagar depend on his monthly remittance to pay for food and other needs.

But Rubel, a migrant worker in Lebanon since 2015, could remit money home only twice this past year as a crippling liquidity crunch in the crisis-hit country drastically limited access to US dollars, with workers like him suffering the brunt of the backlash.

"I earn around six lakh Lebanese pounds a month, which is supposed to be equivalent to around $400 as per the regular exchange rate. But that amount has been slashed down to almost nothing," said the 29-year-old cleaner.

{.....} WORKERS UNABLE TO PAY AIRFARE HOME

In the present situation, one needs to arrange more than three million Lebanese pounds to get $400on the black market -- which for some workers, is nearly impossible to save from a year's earnings, said 50-year-old Shahid Ullah.

Talking with this newspaper on March 5, Shahid was then waiting to be repatriated home.

He added that around 10,000 Bangladeshi workers, in addition to those already registered, were waiting to return home amid the present economic situation in Lebanon -- but many of them are unable to manage the $400 airfare.