Workers feel abandoned by employer, nation.
Amid searing heat, daily explosions and a shortage of food and water, 27 Ukrainian workers have been stuck for several months in Iraq’s troubled capital of Baghdad, awaiting payment for work on a cancelled building project.
They arrived there six months ago to construct villas for an Arab League summit. But when the event was postponed until next year, the construction company stopped building and told the foreign workers to go back home without the promised pay.
But the Ukrainians, along with seven Bulgarians and one Nepalese, refused to leave until they got paid.
They now live in an abandoned compound near the building site without air conditioning or sufficient food. They get little support from Ukraine and hope for more internatinoal support.
“We received help from the American Embassy, from the Australian Embassy but not from ours, the Ukrainian Embassy,” one of the workers told the Kyiv Post by phone, refusing to be identified for fear of retribution.
He said the builders had limited food supplies and little clean drinking water, which already caused health problems for some of them.
We received help from the American Embassy, from the Australian Embassy but not from ours, the Ukrainian Embassy.
– Ukrainian worker in Iraq
Antonio Salanga, head of the Baghdad regional office of International Organization for Migration, said the organization found that four of the workers were sick and sent them for a medical check-up to a United Nations military doctor. IOM now regularly supplies the workers, including one female cook, with food and water.
Salanga said the group lives in terrible conditions in a former shop.
“Small rooms, no ventilation and no air conditioning, while the temperature in Baghdad can reach to 50 C,” Salanga said by telephone.
One of the workers recently tried to commit suicide, depressed about the illness of his child back in Ukraine, and the lack of money for treatment.
Some 217 people came from different countries to Baghdad to work on construction of the villas for the Turkish construction company Salar Group.
They were promised salaries of $2,500 per month, but their real salary was about $1,700-1,800 and few of the workers received any pay, Salanga said.
When work stopped, the company offered the workers $1,000 each to make their way home.
“The company said if you refuse our conditions, we will abandon you,” said one of the workers, adding that the Salar Group owes him $9,000. The company’s total debt to the workers is $285,000, according to the IOM.
Salar Group officials could not be reached for comment.
While the international or so-called “green zone” of Baghdad where the Ukrainian builders live is probably the safest place in this dangerous city, even there “something explodes every other day,” one worker said.
The Ukrainians can’t leave as they came to Iraq with transit visas that have now expired. If they left the green zone, the Iraqi police could arrest them.
IOM recommends that the workers be transported to Ukraine and paid by the Salar Group there. The organization has encouraged both the Iraqi government and Ukrainian diplomats to help the workers receive visas.
Salanga said IOM organized a meeting between the builders and the Ukrainian consul in Baghdad, who promised to discuss the issue with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kyiv.
Oleh Voloshyn, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said he learned about this story from the Kyiv Post.
He added that Ukrainian diplomats can do little to help labor migrants who get into money troubles abroad. “If they [the workers] are going to sit there for a year waiting for their salaries, the state can’t feed them for all this time,” he said.
Voloshyn said Ukrainians often get into trouble with debts abroad, and the country’s embassies usually helps only if people’s lives or health are endangered.
The builders said they contacted the Ukrainian consulate for the first time in February, complaining that they were trapped in bad accommodation and asking for help with visas.
“We received then several packages of water, soap and toothpaste and that was it,” said one of the workers.
Voloshyn said Ukrainians often get into trouble with debts abroad, and the country’s embassies usually helps only if people’s lives or health are endangered.
“They go somewhere, and then start complaining to the Foreign Ministry when somebody owes them,” he said.
But the builders argue they found this job through the legal recruiting agencies, sometimes even paying them with the help of bank loans.
“Some people paid $300-$400 to get this job, some even $1,000,” the builder said, adding that one of recruiting firms in Lviv was called Sital.
A phone call to a number for this company found on the Internet was answered by a man who introduced himself as Oleksandr. He denied that Sital recruited people to go to Baghdad but said he knew about this story.
Oleksandr assured that some Czech company, whose name he couldn’t remember, assisted in hiring of the builders.
Salanga said the company Noblehus, Salar Group’s subcontractor, conducted the recruitment of the workers from abroad.
Noblehus could not be reached for comment.
The workers said they hold out little hope of receiving the money, but just want to obtain visas to give them legal status in Iraq.
“Several days ago the officials from the Iraqi labor ministry came and promised to make maximum effort to help us,” said one of the builders.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
