Makeshift camp for Nepalese squatters in Baghdad

A clutter of makeshift shelters is tucked away from the road that runs through Baghdad’s well-secured airport zone.
About 50 Nepalese men and a handful of Indians are living under the jumble of wooden planks and soiled carpets. Some of the shelters have scraps of tarpaulin over the top to keep out the rain but there is little protection from the winter chill.
“We have no money, no food, no toilet, no water, no job,” said Ganesh Kumar Bhagat, 22. “The first time I arrived here I was happy, I had a good feeling. But we have not been lucky. Nobody should come to Iraq.”
He and the others say they paid agents in their home country up to 5,000 dollars to bring them to Iraq on the promise of a job at one of the many American military bases, earning 800 dollars a month.
Instead, the men find themselves abandoned and penniless. They live off food donated by other people from developing countries who have found work.

Karthik Tangarasu, a 23-year-old from India, sits, wrapped in a scruffy shawl under a spindly shelter, home to about 20 people.
“When I arrived there was no job. We are helpless. I will work for any company and do any job if not then I will go home,” said the man, a hotel catering graduate. “We feel as though God is not looking after us.”
Dawa Serpa, a 41-year-old Nepalese man, came here, like everyone else, to make money.
“We are poor people. I paid 5,000 dollars, money that I got from a loan. The agent told me that I would make 800 dollars a month. They said I could arrive and directly get a job. Five days after I arrived my agent was kicked out of the country by immigration and sent back to Nepal,” he said.
“I am still here with no job. I have a very bad feeling.”
Mr Bhagat also borrowed money to try his luck in Iraq. He does not have the heart to tell his parents the truth about what has happened since his arrival.
“I just tell them I am good and I have a job inside a US camp,” he said, wearing thin clothes that need a good clean and will not keep out the winter cold. The US Department of Devence contracts companies to provide a variety of services at bases across Iraq. These firms employ people from Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Uganda, often through subcontractors who use agents to find the cheap labour.

The Times tried repeatedly to contact a number of the agents who are accused of taking money off these people and leaving them stranded. Most either failed to answer their phone, said it was a wrong number or the call did not connect.
One man, Hary Lutail, a Nepalese agent living in Dubai, did respond. Many workers travelling to Iraq from developing countries such as Nepal, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, fly first to Dubai and then to Baghdad.
Mr Lutail brings about 500 workers to Dubai from Nepal every year. The majority of his recruits, largely electrical workers, go to a US base near the airport, he said, claiming that he charges just $1000 for a visa and airfare.
The agent said that none of “his people” are living in bad conditions, adding that if any of them did have complaints, they could call him on his mobile phone.
Down the road from the makeshift camp, up to 1,000 Nepalese, Sri Lankans, Indians and Bangladeshis are living in three hangars within a walled compound.
Unlike the squatters, these migrant workers have signed contracts with a Kuwaiti-based company, but say that they have had no work or salary since arriving in the country up to three months ago and are also in a bad way.
“I have four children to support,” said Davidson Peters, 52, a tall, slender man, wearing black gloves because of the cold.

“At the moment the whole world is experiencing the festive season, everyone is looking forward to their families getting together for Christmas. At least they should give us one month’s salary and send it to our families straight away.”
The company, Najlaa International Catering Services, denies allegations of mistreatment and also says that it is in the process of back-paying each of the workers from the day they arrived.
Another Sri Lankan man at the compound, however, said such promises had been made before and came to nothing. “They said they will pay our salaries tomorrow. If they do not then we will hold another protest,” he told The Times.
The men poured into the dirt street outside their compound on Tuesday to protest at the living conditions and lack of pay.
Amongst the protestors were two Ugandan contractors for Najlaa who are being flown back to their home country following an incident.
Henry and Isaac said they too thought the situation inside the warehouses was poor. “People are sick with diahorrea,” said Henry.
Najlaa said the two men were just trying to cause trouble.

Sonia Verma, Times correspondent in Dubai, contributed to this report.

[Picture 1: Ganesh Kumar Bhagat, 22, outside one of the makeshift huts;
Picture 2: Karthik Tangarasu, 23, from India and a friend;
Picture 3: Nepalese men wash themselves from a small water pipe;
Picture 4: These eight men live in the makeshift shack behind them;
Picture 5: Davidson Peters, 52, from Sti Lanka;
Picture 6: The demonstrators protesting outside their walled compound;
Picture 7: Isaac, left, and Henry, two Ugandans.]

Comments

[MJ]

I really this to be a big problem i have been contracting in Iraq for for 9 months now and i served in the US military for 12 years and i can't understand how the US military contract and do business with the sub contractors when they are aware of these situations and this is not the first time that KBR and other sub contractors have been accused of this. It really makes the US Military look bad and as American, Father of three, A Veteran of us Military i'm embarce and ashame that this is taking place when we are here to keep peace, order, and human for all people but yet we are no better then the people we are trying to stop it. God how mercy on us all and I pray for those people and that there story goes far and not just brushed off some people really need to be held responsible and this needs to come to an end.

Concern in Iraq

[Scott]

Tragic. These men are victims of unscrupulous individuals--at the same time, however, the Iraqis shouldn't allow in foreign workers without proof of employment.

God bless you for defending the rights of those poor people.

[marc]

At the moment Iraq has no say in who the United States allows to be brought into Iraq and for what purpose.

Many U.S. Commanders have been properly appalled and ashamed by the conditions of these workers. They often live in filthy overcrowded conditions and are sometimes fed slop or scraps from the trash bins out of the Troop dinning halls. They do dangerous work without safety equipment or sometimes even shoes. They are provided no protective gear against the frequent mortar attacks on the bases where they are employed. And are often moved between bases over the dangerous highways of Iraq in open bed trucks.

Military personnel have very little control over the contractors and to try and take action on behalf of the workers would require untangling a rats nest of subcontractors, sub-subcontractors and even sub-sub-subcontractor, all of which are registered as corporations outside of the United states. Then there of course would be the arguments of what is and is not in the contract. In the end it becomes expedient, if morally questionable, to just turn a blind eye on the whole thing.

[Aimen]

I heard that the owner of Najla Co. is Jordanian and the Iraqi MoI seized his passport
But in the fact no one can do anything for him, he is Jordanian and the American forces give Jordanians good benefits in Iraq.
Unfortunately the Americans don't hear what the Jordanians in Jordan say about "the US occupation in Iraq" and how Iraqis sold Saddam and the country for the west but in Iraq they say we work in Iraq, no problem with that!!!!!!

[MANOVIBES]

THANK GOD FOR PEOPLE LIKE M/S DEBBIE IF NOT FOR YOU, WE DO NOT NO WHERE WE WOULD END UP OR HOW,YOU WERE OUR ONLY VOICE,WHEN THEY SILENCED OURS WITH THERE POWER AND USD'S,BUT ALL GLORY TO GOD WHO SENT M/S DEBBIE LIKE AN ANGEL FROM HEAVEN,A VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS