"For Persian Gulf migrant workers the pandemic has amplified systemic discrimination," 30 Oct 2020

[Transguard's] Covid-19 protection measures were minimal. “They put hand sanitizer out and gave each person just one mask that we had to keep washing and reusing for months. But they weren’t testing us.” Some of the workers were still required to report for duty, leaving Gurung terrified that they’d “bring the virus back with them”...

Although Transguard continued to offer free food, she quickly ran through her meager savings... In April, unable to wait any longer without pay and fearing for her safety, she submitted her resignation. The company denied her request... (Transguard did not respond to a request for comment.)...

millions of migrant workers [in the Arabian Gulf] found themselves abruptly deprived of income, and in many cases trapped in crowded accommodations with little access to health care or even food. Others were shunted to quarantine or detention facilities, often in unsafe conditions that had been linked to disease outbreaks even before the arrival of the coronavirus...

[One interviewed Nepali worker] worked for two years at a warehouse in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, and said he routinely witnessed his coworkers accepting abusive treatment. “If we didn’t work fast enough, they would yell at us and threaten us. I saw them beating some people. If something went missing, we got charged huge fines. Once, a worker was hit by a forklift and broke his leg—and all we worried about was how they would punish us.” Fed up with this treatment, Tamang, 27, left at the end of his first two-year contract, in 2018. “Now I am so glad I left.”