"My father is not a statistic," 19 Jan 2021

Since the lockdown has eased, my father spends around sixteen hours a day in the driving seat. If he cannot earn more than AED6,000 in a month for the company, he gets nothing. For ten months now my family has received no money from him. As a result, I had to pause my postgraduate study and start a full-time job.

In the middle of all this chaos, the company started terminating people. The first victims were those who had low revenues and health complications. My father met both criteria. Every day I heard that some of his colleagues were called by HR...

In my village, local shops were hit hard due to the low flow of remittances. Many of the shops are owned by returnee migrant workers and their main customers are migrant families. A number of my relatives could not fly back to their countries of employment because their visa had expired. They all are facing an uncertain future. After losing their jobs overseas, they are now struggling to survive in Bangladesh.