Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

Last week the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) warned that tens of mil­lions of mi­grant work­ers, forced to re­turn home be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic af­ter los­ing their jobs, now face un­em­ploy­ment and even pover­ty in their re­spec­tive coun­tries.

Un­doubt­ed­ly, this will al­so have reper­cus­sions for T&T as the econ­o­my strug­gles to re­main afloat, econ­o­mists warn.

Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon said of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics from the UN De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Af­fairs in­di­cat­ed that last year, 334,304 peo­ple mi­grat­ed from T&T.

Of that num­ber, 280,062 mi­grat­ed to North Amer­i­ca while 35,565 set­tled in Eu­rope.

Ar­joon said these val­ues, how­ev­er, are un­der­stat­ed as they would not have cap­tured all those peo­ple stay­ing in these coun­tries with­out le­gal per­mis­sion.

He ex­plained mi­grant labour re­turn­ing to T&T will cre­ate added com­pe­ti­tion for em­ploy­ment, which will be com­pound­ed by the Venezue­lan work­force lo­cal­ly es­pe­cial­ly in low and se­mi-skilled oc­cu­pa­tions.

How­ev­er, in the short term, many busi­ness­es will con­tin­ue to cut ex­ist­ing staff giv­en that con­sumer spend­ing is ex­pect­ed to re­main low­er than pre-COVID 19 lev­els, Ar­joon said.

He fur­ther not­ed that busi­ness­es will not be able to ful­ly meet their wage bills and cov­er their op­er­at­ing and fixed costs due to low sales rev­enues.

“There­fore, some of the re­turn­ing mi­grants could end up hav­ing to re­main un­em­ployed in T&T for the short term.

“De­pend­ing on the ex­tent of this re­verse mi­gra­tion, we may have to stretch our lim­it­ed re­sources to ac­com­mo­date these per­sons such as health re­sources, hous­ing, and so­cial ben­e­fits such as food cards etc,” Ar­joon said.

Many of these mi­grants would, how­ev­er, be re­turn­ing with valu­able skills gained while they were abroad.

Ar­joon said this can on­ly serve to ben­e­fit the do­mes­tic econ­o­my once the State can cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­te­grate such peo­ple in­to its na­tion­al labour force and lever­age these skills.

As part of T&T’s re­cov­ery plan, Ar­joon sug­gest­ed that the State de­vel­op a pro­ce­dure for match­ing the skills of re­turn­ing mi­grants to oc­cu­pa­tions that will cre­ate fur­ther eco­nom­ic val­ue.

“Some would al­so bring a health­i­er work eth­ic which should be mim­ic­ked by our lo­cal work­force to boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

“It can, there­fore, be use­ful for the State to hold diplo­mat­ic talks with the US and oth­er coun­tries where mi­grants may be re­turn­ing from, so that a bi­lat­er­al agree­ment can be fos­tered where we re­ceive sup­port (fi­nan­cial or oth­er­wise) to rein­te­grate these re­turn­ing mi­grants to our lo­cal econ­o­my,” Ar­joon said.

Some of these mi­grants will al­so re­turn in­tend­ing to start a small busi­ness to sup­port their liveli­hoods, es­pe­cial­ly if they have some sav­ings that they are will­ing to in­vest.

This, Ar­joon not­ed, can cre­ate much-need­ed em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties over time.

But for this to be pos­si­ble, the State must make it eas­i­er to do busi­ness lo­cal­ly, es­pe­cial­ly since re­turn­ing mi­grants may be un­fa­mil­iar with the mas­sive bu­reau­cra­cy and de­lays in the lo­cal sys­tem.

“In­deed, the cost of do­ing busi­ness has grown con­sid­er­ably, while it can take years to get ba­sic per­mits and ap­provals from gov­ern­ment agen­cies.

“This could dis­cour­age them from want­i­ng to in­vest, and should, there­fore, be ad­dressed ur­gent­ly.

“If some of these per­sons, or their rel­a­tives, al­so own lo­cal prop­er­ty which they can pledge as col­lat­er­al, they can al­so end up com­pet­ing for loans from lo­cal banks which could dis­place oth­er lo­cals from ac­cess­ing the same loans,” Ar­joon not­ed.

Venezue­lan mi­grants con­tin­ue to come in­to the coun­try, whether the Gov­ern­ment is will­ing to ad­mit it or not, Ar­joon said, adding that the re­cent COVID-19 re­stric­tions will re­sult in many los­ing their jobs and seek­ing oth­er means of sur­vival.

Some, he said, would have tak­en up do­mes­tic work, house main­te­nance, small con­struc­tion jobs among oth­ers which they would have sourced from an in­for­mal net­work cre­at­ed in the last few years.

“How­ev­er, many are sur­viv­ing on bare ra­tions and can­not pay rent. Lo­cal agen­cies such as Liv­ing Wa­ters Com­mu­ni­ty have been pro­vid­ing some fi­nan­cial re­lief to many of these mi­grants.

“How­ev­er, with more en­ter­ing and liv­ing in poor con­di­tions, it in­creas­es their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to the virus, which may go un­de­tect­ed by the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties,” Ar­joon said.

In 2021, when the per­mis­sion to stay for reg­is­tered Venezue­lans has ex­pired, many may be hes­i­tant to leave giv­en the so­cial and eco­nom­ic cri­sis in Venezuela com­pound­ed by poor ac­cess to health care, Ar­joon added.

The Gov­ern­ment’s purse will be un­der fur­ther pres­sure as re­turn­ing mi­grants may al­so be forced to tap in­to State grants, said econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James.

He said while he does not ex­pect the fig­ure of re­turn­ing mi­grants to be large the com­pe­ti­tion for jobs nev­er­the­less, will be fierce.

And this can re­sult in so­cial ills like a fur­ther ex­ac­er­ba­tion of the crime sit­u­a­tion.

James said the lat­est pro­jec­tions show that T&T’s un­em­ploy­ment rate is ex­pect­ed to be around eight per cent giv­en the grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple who lost their jobs due to the pan­dem­ic.

How­ev­er, he de­scribed eight per cent as a mod­est fig­ure.

“From the point of view of a pos­i­tive ef­fect of re­turn­ing mi­grant labour stim­u­lat­ing the econ­o­my I don’t see any pos­i­tive ef­fect be­cause they would sim­ply have to join the on­go­ing strug­gle of the eight per cent.

“But once they are cit­i­zens and they come home they are en­ti­tled to ap­ply for gov­ern­ment pro­grammes,” James ex­plained.

He said Gov­ern­ment can­not do any­thing but to re­spond “when the pres­sure hits.”

“It will on­ly add to what is al­ready a large bur­den of the de­pen­dence of un­em­ployed per­sons on the State that COVID has cre­at­ed in a con­text of the crash on oil prices,” James added.

On the oth­er hand, he not­ed, re­turn­ing mi­grants could def­i­nite­ly boost the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion giv­en that this is an elec­tion year.

Labour spe­cial­ist Lesmore Fred­er­ick ad­vised that the Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment a labour task force to ad­dress the chal­lenges T&T cit­i­zens may face up­on re­turn­ing home af­ter los­ing their jobs.

Coun­tries like Aus­tralia im­ple­ment­ed sim­i­lar task forces last year to en­sure pro­tec­tion in the work­place and to bol­ster en­force­ment ac­tion against em­ploy­ers who ex­ploit vul­ner­a­ble work­ers.

Fred­er­ick said a task force like that in T&T would en­able the Gov­ern­ment to be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to im­ple­ment pub­lic pol­i­cy.

“I see the Gov­ern­ment hav­ing to take the lead on this ini­tia­tive and de­ter­mine what is to be done to ad­dress na­tion­als re­turn­ing be­cause they are our peo­ple and we have to as­sist them,” Fred­er­ick added.