ISLAMABAD/DUBAI (Reuters) – Pakistan has raised concerns with the United Arab Emirates that many citizens were returning home from the Gulf Arab state infected with COVID-19 and that crowded living conditions in the UAE may be helping spread the virus, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
“Both (governments) are working together to find (an) optimal solution to this shared concern,” ministry spokeswoman Aisha Farooqi told Reuters in a WhatsApp message.
A UAE foreign ministry official later said the government “completely rejects this version of events”.
“Everyone on UAE repatriation flights has been tested before departure, and those found to be infected were not allowed to travel,” Assistant Undersecretary for Consular Affairs Khalid al-Mazrouei told Reuters.
The official did not address Islamabad’s concerns about living conditions.
Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported that on a flight from Abu Dhabi in late April, 105 of the 209 passengers on board tested positive. Pakistan’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request to confirm the figure.
The UAE is home to around 1.5 million Pakistanis, many of whom are low-wage workers living in crowded housing and are now out of work and stranded due to the coronavirus crisis.
Repatriation flights began last month after tens of thousands of Pakistanis in the UAE asked their government to be flown home. The UAE had also warned it could review labour ties with countries refusing to take back its nationals.
Around 60,000 Pakistanis have so far registered to return from the UAE, according to Pakistan’s consulate in Dubai.
Pakistan is facing the challenge of quarantine thousands of overseas workers wanting to returning home while it deals with its own fast-growing number of cases, as infections reached more than 21,000 with over 500 deaths.
Gulf states have increased testing after recording a growing number of cases among low-income migrants living in overcrowded housing.
The UAE has reported 15,192 infections and 146 deaths.
Abu Dhabi’s government media office on Monday tweeted that 335,000 people living and working in the industrial Mussafah area would be tested for COVID-19 over the next two weeks.
Low-wage overseas workers are normally a vital source of labour in areas such as construction and transport for many Gulf nations and contribute billions of dollars in remittances to their home countries such as Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
But many labour rights activists say they are vulnerable to exploitative labour practices and poor working and living conditions
An overseas worker in Dubai said that he lived with three others in a small room with bunk beds and some workers lived six to a room.
“It’s risky when you live together,” he said, asking not to be named. “It’s not good for us right now, the situation with COVID-19.”
Singapore has among the highest coronavirus case loads in Asia, mainly because of mass outbreaks in migrant-worker dormitories.
Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad and Alexander Cornwell in Dubai; Editing by Nick Macfie
