No man’s land
Pakistanis often risk everything to earn a living abroad, but is it really worth it?
Displaced dreams
Pakistani expats have raised their families’ standard of living at a great cost to their own well-being
Make your way to the international departures area of any airport in Pakistan on any given day and you will see at least one entire extended family seeing off a blue-collar worker who is going for the first time to take a job abroad — most likely somewhere in the Middle East.
The worker in question will be nicely dressed, in crisp new clothes, with a bus full of relatives to cheer him on. On their faces will be hopes of a brighter future for themselves; they dream that finally their family will be able to see better days.
The worker’s children, if any, will be seen skipping about in delight because they have been promised some new toys; the wife will be anxiously waiting for a home she can call her own; the sister, whose marriage has been delayed due to insufficient dowry funds, is basking in the hope that she may be able to get married soon. The parents, whose last wish in life is to perform Hajj or Umrah, hope to see it being fulfilled. And with all these dreams the family will send off the worker, eagerly waiting for the first salary to be remitted to them.
Historically, finding work abroad is the ultimate dream for any blue-collar worker in Pakistan. After all, most professionals in the country face a stagnating economy and skyrocketing inflation — the statistics paint a grim picture even for those who are able to find a job. According to a 2013 ILO report, the average monthly wages for a Pakistani in 2010-2011 was Rs10,211 for men and Rs6,422 for women. Professionals and blue-collar workers in Pakistan earn far more than this, but the rising cost of living and a stagnating economy make working in a foreign country — even under very trying circumstances — far more appealing.
Little do their loved ones realise the everyday struggles they face ... The reality of being a blue-collar worker abroad is far from the rosy picture their families have sketched in their minds.
The government hasn’t done much in the way of improving the economy. Back in 2011, Pakistan’s Planning Commission (PPC) issued a report, Pakistan: Framework for Economic Growth, emphasising that the government needs to ensure an annual economic growth of over 7pc to absorb the large youth segment entering the job market.
According to the same PPC report, the country’s youth (under 30) is estimated to be around 68pc of the population, and 3pc of this segment is predicted to enter the market every year. This means millions of people are looking for their first job every year; the economic growth of 4.7pc in 2014 and 4.4pc in 2013 falls far short of what is needed to ensure that such people are able to find a job, especially one that matches their qualifications.
Facing a bleak job market and low pay, it isn’t surprising that Pakistanis look beyond their borders for a brighter future. The higher earnings and savings, even for those working in menial jobs, is one of the reasons that people continue to search for work in a foreign city, whether it be Shanghai, New York or even Kuala Lumpur (see Braving it in Brickfields).
The trend to look for a better life outside Pakistan began in earnest in the 70s (and was facilitated by the Bhutto government at the time): Dubai Chalo! became the rally cry of the decade. Over the next 40 years, Pakistani workers, both professional and white collar, steadily streamed out in search of jobs and a better life. In 2010, according to the Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development, there were an estimated 6.3 million Pakistani expatriates across the globe, from China to the US.
Given the country’s stagnant economy, more and more people look towards ‘greener’ pastures. But in reality, is leaving home, family and friends for a better-paying albeit humble job really worth it?
“I feel like I have become only a cash cow. It is extremely painful to know that your nearest and dearest think of you merely as a utility …”
The tide that lifts all boats
Pakistani expats work hard to send money back home — according to the State Bank of Pakistan, $18.4b worth of remittances were sent in the year 2014-2015. And this has undoubtedly raised the standard of living of their family members back home: research indicates that they do.
For instance, in a case study on Gujrat, Punjab, (Impacts of Remittances on Living Standards of Emigrants’ Families in Gujrat-Pakistan by Sarfraz Khan et al) the average monthly income for families receiving remittances increased from Rs11,450 to Rs92,640. Needless to say, a nine-fold rise in income translated into a much higher standard of living.
Family and dependents back home not only live better materially, they become the envy of their neighbours and extended family, and their stature in society rises. “Please ask your husband to try and get my husband a job where he is,” says the friend who is struggling to raise her children on her husband’s present salary. “We are really in need of money; can you please lend me some? You surely must have lots. After all your husband works in Kuwait!” says the neighbour who has to repay a pressing loan.
But such an ascent in social status and income class for their families comes at a great cost to the workers themselves — who not only spend a meagre amount on themselves and live, sometimes, under very trying and harsh circumstances, but often feel isolated and cut off from their families.
Little do their loved ones realise the everyday struggles they face to be able to earn what they do. The reality of being a blue-collar worker abroad is far from the rosy picture their families have sketched in their minds.
Money can’t buy love
On a flight from Dubai to Karachi I happened to sit next to Farzana, a nurse, who was returning home after three years since first starting work in the Middle East. My first and most obvious statement, of course, was “Your family must be delighted to see you after all this time”.
However, I didn’t get an as enthusiastic reply from her: she went quiet, lowered her eyes and gave a heartbreaking reply: “I am not too sure if they even care whether I visit them or not!” Shocked at this response, I couldn’t help myself but ask her why she thought so.
“When I informed my family that I was coming to visit them for a few weeks I, too, was expecting delight from them. After all, three years is a very long time and I have missed them all terribly. As you can expect, living on your own in a foreign country is not easy. When I spoke to my husband, he asked me how much money I was bringing with me. My children asked me what gifts I was bringing for them. And my father wanted to make sure that I was only coming for a holiday and would return.”
In other words, what upset Farzana was that she was stripped of all her societal roles and was seen as simply a money-minting machine rather than a mother, daughter or a wife. She even wondered that if her loved ones had to choose, whether they would pick money over her:
“I feel like I have become only a cash cow. It is extremely painful to know that your nearest and dearest think of you merely as a utility … even when I call home, they only talk to me about their material needs and what I was going to do to [meet] it … Only my mother inquires of my wellbeing and asks me if I need anything. So I am returning to my beloved home and family but with a heavy heart. I cannot help but think that had I just sent them the money I used to buy my airline ticket, they would have been happier.”
Stories like Farzana’s abound: many Pakistan migrant workers find that the family they worked so hard to provide for may not be willing to welcome them back home and, as is often the case, takes undue advantage of them.
Kamal worked as a cook for a family in Kuwait for 30 years. His employer narrates that he used to diligently send money to his brother in Azad Kashmir, hoping that he would help him build a house for Kamal’s wife to live in. Instead, Kamal’s brother used all the money to build a house for himself and his family; eventually he threw Kamal’s wife out.
Back to square one, he started saving money again but in the following years he developed Alzheimer’s. Due to a few violent episodes, his employers were compelled to send him back to Azad Kashmir to his wife. But the wife refused to stay with him and take care of him; he is now admitted in a care facility paid for by his ex-employers.
Like Kamal, Shireen, too, has seen the dark side of living as a worker abroad. In her case, her family held her daughter ‘hostage’ to ensure remittances flowed back to them.
The young widow has been working as a cleaner in Saudi Arabia for the last three years. When her husband died in a car accident, her daughter was only six months old and no one in her family was ready to support her financially. She tried to earn a living but was unable to get too far, so her brother married her off to a man working in Saudi Arabia, thinking he would support her.
After marriage, Shireen found out that her new husband was already married and had three children. He refused to send her any money and instead asked her to join him in Saudi to find work and support her daughter.
Her family agreed to take care of her daughter on the understanding that she would send them all the money she earned — with the intention of keeping a large chunk of it for themselves. For a few months all went well but then her husband started to beat her and would forcibly take her salary away. Back home, when she didn’t send any money, her family took her daughter out of school and began mistreating her.
At present she is on the run from her husband so that she is able to send money home. “I work day and night to fulfil my family’s greed and I am getting absolutely nothing out of it!” she bemoans.
Parents, such as Shireen, pay a high cost to ensure a good living for their children. And sometimes they are left wondering if the trade off was worth it, as husband and wife, Ilyas and Fareeda, do. The couple came to work in Abu Dhabi with the intention of securing a prosperous future for their two teenage children; their 18-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter.
What they found out instead was how, in an increasingly consumerist society, their children were quintessential consumers. “Soon upon our arrival, our children started presenting their demands. My daughter used to ask us for gold jewellery and we used to save money and send her whatever small items we could. But at 14, she ran away with a boy; she returned home pregnant!”
They seemed as ‘disappointed’ with their son as they were with their daughter: “Our son married a woman five years his senior and started drinking alcohol with the money we were sending. Every time we called them, all we heard from them is how we don’t care about them and don’t do anything for them while we ourselves are living in a lap of luxury. They don’t want us to return or even visit; instead they have asked us to send them a laptop and an iPad.”
Perhaps the most heartbreaking of all is when the worker feels so rejected by their families that they lose their will to live. “A colleague of ours committed suicide after he came back from Pakistan,” informs Riaz, a taxi driver in Qatar.
“He went to see his two children after two years and was extremely upset that they didn’t recognise him or have any affinity to him. Instead they were fighting their mother, questioning who this man staying with them was. Moreover, his wife asked for a divorce as she had found someone else she wanted to marry. Such is life for us overseas workers,” he laments, adding “I was not at all surprised when I heard that he took his life. Who wants to live a life like this?”
The harrowing tales of overseas workers are endless. Broken marriages, soured relationships, spoilt or misled children and family rejections can and do change their lives forever. Their sacrifices day in and day out quite often don’t bear much fruit for them to cherish. And what was meant to secure their future ends in disarray.
The writer is a former Dawn staff member Additional statistics and data contributed by Images on Sunday staff Names and locations have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals
Braving it in Brickfields
A tête-à-tête over tea reveals the pitfalls and advantages of being a migrant labourer in Malaysia
The sounds you tend to hear on the noisy jalans (roads), lorongs (streets) and lengkoks (alleyways) of Brickfields, a neighbourhood in the heart of Kuala Lampur, are mostly a mix of men and women ordering their meals or negotiating the price of puja items at a murugan shop.
Brickfields is known as Little India and, as the name suggests, is home to a huge population of both recent and veteran migrants from the subcontinent as well as Indian Malaysians. People mill about, some buying puja flowers at the Jalan Tun Sambhantan, songs from the latest Tamil movie blast from speakers at movie-rental shops, temple bells ring, one can hear the lazy banter of old men at a roadside mamak (food stalls run by Tamil Muslims), and the bustle and laughter of school kids.
Most of the communication in Brickfields happens in Tamil but, once in a while, you hear someone walking on the pavement and talking on the phone in your mother tongue — Punjabi. You turn your head towards the source of the sound and immediately recognise them as one of your own; the man on the phone is talking to his family back in a village in Pakistan in his local dialect of Punjabi.
One idle evening, I accosted one such man and his companion and asked for their names and where they were from. Both men were perplexed as to why a young woman was chasing them in the street and was now interested in their names and other details. To make them feel comfortable, I introduced myself and told them that I was also from Pakistan. Immediately our friendship began.
We talked more about being a foreigner in Malaysia and the many inconveniences attached to it. We talked about our work permits and how they can be cancelled on a whim by our employers, about how much each of them paid the agents to get a work permit and how many people from their villages, in their desperation to find work that will help their families live a comfortable life, ended up paying huge amounts of money.
Pakistanis like to chit chat over a cup of garma garam chai, so naturally we decided to have a cup of teh tarik (a type of tea) at a nearby mamak food stall. We chatted about tropical rains, traffic jams, the recent heat-wave, what brought us here and what we miss the most about home.
The men were both from Kasur, a town close to Lahore. One of them arrived in Malaysia three months ago and has been looking for a job, while the other has been living and working as a construction worker in Kuala Lumpur for the last two years. Both came to Malaysia through agents, who provide contractual jobs to migrants from South Asia, and incurred heavy loans to pay the agent.
Typically, these agents play the role of middle men and connect applicants with construction companies that are always on the lookout for cheap contractual labour in the city. Successful applicants are provided temporary jobs and work permits by these construction companies that prefer to hire workers from South Asia, Indonesia, Philippines and Myanmar.
As construction workers, they work on daily wages that ranges between MYR40-70 (equivalent to Rs1,020-1,787 at the current exchange rate) depending on their prior experience and the nature of construction work they are involved in. They work for six days a week, from 8am till 7pm, and sometimes even 9pm.
Most workers who have arrived through these agents earn a monthly income of MYR1,200-1,800 (equivalent to Rs30,600 to Rs45,900) which they use to pay off the loan they took to pay the agent’s fee and to cover their living expenses in a foreign country. A small portion of their income also goes to their families back home.
How do they manage their accommodation? I asked curiously.
According to the two men, the contractors rent a house close to the construction site and workers share these quarters. This reminded me of the terrace house close to my previous residence on Jalan Limau Manis, which was home to a group of factory workers from Myanmar. Their three-bedroom house was shared by 15 people, who would live in the house according to their work shifts.
The dayshift group would vacate the house at around 8:30am so as to accommodate the tired bodies of the group that worked at the night shift. Like most Malaysian terrace houses, it had table fans instead of ceiling fans, and in the midst of the day, in the sweltering heat, they would sleep close to the open windows to cool off their bodies.
Back at our teh tarik table, the phone rang. One of their friends, another Pakistani gentleman, called to say he’d be joining them for their Sunday evening hangout. Soon enough, the friend arrived at the same mamak and they started having a group discussion on what food he would like to have. Being cautious about halal and non-halal food, the menu offered few options to them. Finally he settled for a cup of teh tarik. We all joked about Pakistanis’ love for chai.
I made a remark about teh tarik and how it gives us a refuge in the absence of chai in pardes. They did not seem to be in an agreement with me and told me how much they miss the charm of their home-made doodh patti.
“What else do you miss about home?” I asked.
“There is nobody to take care of us. If you fall ill, then there is nobody to rush you to the hospital.”
One of them told me that he had very high fever few months ago and no one was around to take him to the doctor or provide him food and water in bed; being daily wage workers, his housemates would not want to miss valuable hours at work. He missed the support system that a family provides back home.
“Does your contractor provide health insurance?” I asked curiously.
“No. We simply buy over-the-shelf medicines for minor illnesses, like fever,” was the reply.
How often do they visit Pakistan?
Our new companion on the table told me that he visited his family a year ago; his first visit to Pakistan during his six-year-long stay in Malaysia. The other two will visit Pakistan once they have paid off their loans.
It reminded me of a group of migrants who shared the flight with me during my last trip to Pakistan. Standing in the long queue at the immigration counter in the arrival lounge of Allama Iqbal International Airport, I could hear them chat with an elderly man.
The group, I learned, worked as mechanics in a car repair shop in Johor Bahru and were visiting their families after five years. They had just learned from the elderly man about the new highway that connects GT Road with their village. “Five years is a long time,” the elderly man said to them.
The talk of home and homely things made all of us nostalgic. We talked more about being a foreigner in Malaysia and the many inconveniences attached to it. We talked about our work permits and how they can be cancelled on a whim by our employers, about how much each of them paid the agents to get a work permit and how many people from their villages, in their desperation to find work that will help their families live a comfortable life, ended up paying huge amounts of money, sometimes their family’s life savings to fake agents, who promised them gold but never delivered anything or gave fake work permits.
It reminded me of the guy sitting next to me on the flight during my last trip home. He remained quiet and did not move his eyes from the window throughout the six-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur to Colombo. When the air hostess asked him about food, he said he was not hungry. The tense expression on his face was quite telling, so I asked if everything was okay with him and whether he would like to have some water.
I learnt later that he had been deported by the Malaysian immigration authorities for entering Malaysia with a fake work permit and a fake visa. He was held in a deportation unit for a week, as all PIA flights that week had been cancelled due to a strike by the airline. He told me how he had spent his brother’s savings for his Malaysian visa and work-permit fee and that he had not told his family about his whereabouts yet. He also mentioned to me the mistreatment he faced during his stay in the deportation unit.
Similar stories of mistreatment were shared by my teh tarik companions, even though their paperwork was complete, and they had valid work permits and visas. They told me several incidents of harassment and abuse by local policemen, who corner migrant workers very often to extort money from them. Sometimes they are lucky to get themselves free by just paying MYR50 (equivalent to Rs1,275), other times they have to pay everything they have in their pockets and more.
The fear of harassment and extortion by the police is always lingering in the air, and it’s because of this fear that they carry their original passports with them most of the time. But even that does not always protect them from rampant harassment and extortion by the local police.
Despite these challenges and difficulties, these men point out that they would still prefer working abroad. They are able to save up MYR800-1,000 (approximately Rs20,000-Rs25,500) per month to remit to their families back home.
“I have married off my sister and paid back my agents’ loan in the past three years,” said our new companion on the teh tarik table.
Another person told me: “Over here, even if we work at a petrol station, we can earn enough money to send Rs10-15,000 home; over there, for jobs like this, we don’t get any money”.
But that’s not all about the pardes that attracts them — it’s the opportunity to do any work as long as the pay is good and not be confined by middle-class expectations.
“Over here, if we are doing a menial job, then people in the family only know that the son is working in Malaysia. In Pakistan, we can’t do work like this … otherwise we won’t have any respect in the family,” they point out.
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, June 19th, 2016