Ukrainian construction workers who were stuck in Baghdad for more than six months are trying to win compensation from their employer, a firm that left them without money or visas.
Some 200 mostly Ukrainian workers came to Iraq last winter to build villas for an Arab League summit, lured by promises of a $2,500 a month salary.
But after the prospect was postponed in April, the Turkish construction company Salar Group told the workers to leave without the promised pay. While most returned to their home countries or for other job opportunities in Iraq, some 35 of the most desperate laborers decided to stay and demand the money owed to them.
They lived in a crowded, dark, dirty and unventilated compound in scorching heat near a building site. They survived thanks to the help of international organizations and several foreign embassies.
By late October, only 22 of them — 15 Ukrainians and seven Bulgarians – remained. They managed to receive $2,000 in compensation from the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Before their departure, the International Organization for Migration found them a lawyer in an attempt to recover some $300,000 in back wages owed to the group.
“If these workers win, it will be a very important precedent that will change the situation in the future. Other workers who are stranded and left without any money could go back to this case,” said Livia Styp Rekowska, an International Organization for Migration representative in Iraq.
IOM is currently gathering evidence for potential criminal charges in Iraq while a crime probe into human trafficking is under way in Ukraine.
The number of Ukrainians who work abroad is estimated from 4 to 5 million, experts say. They send to Ukraine about $6 million every year, according to the World Bank. But since many are working illegally or going to dangerous parts of the world, many are vulnerable and exploited abroad.
Eventually, the Ukrainian government paid for their flight from Bagdad to Kyiv. But the construction workers say that officials were slow to react.
“I was asking our counselor in Bagdad why nobody was checking the officially registered recruiting companies that brought us to this situation,” one of the builders, 36-year-old Oleksandr Kharchuk, said. Kravchuk said he expected to pay his bank loans thanks to his job, but now he only hopes to receive $3,000 that the firm still owes him.
“It is very sad that they started helping us after my wife and daughter visited the foreign affairs ministry,” said another builder, who didn’t want to be identified out of fear of retaliation from government officials.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
