Due to lockdown measures, the kafala system forces all the participating employees to live with their employers, which drastically increases their exploitation and abuse. Even in a time like the pandemic, kafala protects abusive employers exercising control over workers’ lives, who may choose to not pay wages or offer vacations, and above all, to refuse paying for their treatment if they contract the virus. The employees who left their employers without their permission risked losing their legal residency in the country and faced detention and deportation.
Safety precautions like social distancing were ignored in detention centers, so migrant eviction inadvertently made breeding hotspots for the virus to spread. Even if a worker’s contracts are not terminated, but they want to escape the abusive situations of their employers, they can’t change their address without their employer agreeing. So, this leads to their detention in overcrowded centers, which also spreads COVID-19, and they eventually get deported. Violating workers’ rights, agencies in Lebanon frequently ask employers to pay the first few months’ salary to them, rather than directly to the worker. This has led to workers facing forced labor and human trafficking by the recruitment agencies.