Forced exits, unpaid wages, and uncertain future

After the United States and Israel went to war with Iran, Tehran launched retaliatory aerial attacks across the Gulf, accusing several countries in the region of supporting the US-led war effort. The strikes targeted energy facilities, water plants, airports, businesses and military sites allegedly linked to US interests and involvement. Following more than a month of attacks, the oil-rich Gulf states suffered severe economic disruption, with business slowdowns and interruptions to energy production and supply.  

But for the migrant workers who form the backbone of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) workforce, the consequences have been even more devastating. During the course of this war, many migrant workers across the Gulf lost their jobs, faced unpaid wages, or were abruptly forced to leave countries, a MRRORS investigation has found. Workers from some of the poorest parts of the world said their employers and host governments offered no protection or support during the war, and instead pushed them into even more difficult situations. 

One of them is Karma, who had worked for about three and a half years as maintenance staff at a gas plant in Qatar. Repeated attacks disrupted operations at the gas plant where he worked.

Karma had never experienced such big explosions and fires in his life. During Iran’s aerial attacks on the Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar, he saw massive oil tanks at his worksite engulfed in flames and smoke. He was terrified, but leaving the job and returning to Nepal never crossed his mind. He knew that if he stopped working, his family would struggle to survive in their impoverished village back home. 

But in March 2026, he said, his employer suddenly terminated him and ordered him to leave the country. “I had absolutely no desire to return home [at] that time – not even one percent,” said Karma, now back in Nepal. “But they sent me home forcefully and deceitfully.”  

 “Not much oil refining was happening when I was there,” Karma said. “So why would a company need many workers? After all, I'm a labourer. The company keeps me only when there is work to do. But because of the damage, there is far less work than before.”In March, state-owned Qatar Energy told Reuters that the Iranian attacks had wiped out 17 percent of the country’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity - Opens in new tab after two LNG trains and a gas-to-liquids facility were damaged. Experts say repairs to such infrastructure could take years - Opens in new tab. With the plants still operating far below full capacity, workers said only a limited number of essential repair staff have remained, while the vast majority have already been sent home.

‘Long leave’ or silent terminations?

Testimonies from returnee migrant workers suggest that their employers did not follow even basic procedures before sending workers home. Workers said they were given little or no prior notice, no clear explanation about whether they were losing their jobs permanently, and no certainty about whether they would ever be called back.  

Karma said his employer, Altrad Group, suddenly posted a list of workers being sent home on the walls of the accommodation building. When he saw his name, he was stunned. “I wanted to work for a few more years, but when they said ‘go’, I had to leave,” he said.

According to him, the company secretly purchased his flight ticket without informing him and handed it over only three hours before departure. “They prepared everything the way they wanted,” he said. “Workers had no idea they were being sent home until they saw the list and received their flight ticket. This is not the way to send workers away.”

Workers also said they were not given adequate time to search for new jobs or transfer to other employers before they were forced to leave the country. Several said that they questioned the company about the sudden exits, but received vague or dismissive responses. 

“When we asked the camp boss why we were being sent home and whether we would be called back, he simply said, ‘You’re on long leave, just go home,’” Karma recalled. He estimated that around 1,500 migrant workers employed at gas plants in the Ras Laffan area were sent home in a similar manner. “I’m pretty sure the majority of them had no idea about their exit.Everything happened so quickly.”

Migrant workers employed at industrial sites outside Ras Laffan also lost their jobs after operations slowed or halted. Balram, who worked at Mesaieed Industrial City, said Altrad Group and its subsidiary Cape East sent hundreds of workers home after missile attacks damaged a water tank used for an oil refinery in Mesaieed in early March. “On the day of my return flight, more than 100 workers from our camps returned together,” he said.

As of April, approximately 30,000 Nepali migrants had returned home following the escalation of the conflict, according to Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Out of them, “about 21,000 or 22,000 people have returned from Qatar alone,” according to Ramkaji Khadka, Joint Secretary and Chief of the Central Asia, West Asia, and Africa Division at the Ministry. 

Workers were reportedly told they would be called back once the situation in Qatar normalises. But many said they were given no timeline – and no guarantee about whether they would ever return. 

Two months after being sent home, Balram said his employer has still not contacted him about resuming work. He eventually learned that some workers had been recalled because their sites resumed operations, but the project he had worked on would not be back in operation anytime soon. “Now, I’m not hopeful about returning to Qatar,” he said. “When the project is almost shut down, why would they invite me again?” 

Back in Nepal, Balram now worries he may permanently lose not only his job but also his pending dues. He said he had accumulated QR 2,000 (USD 550) as an end-of-service gratuity after nearly three years of work at a power plant, but had not received it. He is particularly frustrated that his employer never honestly informed him about whether his work had actually ended. “If they had clearly told me my work was over, I would have claimed my end-of-service money while I was still in Qatar,” he said. “Now, what can I do from Nepal?” 

What troubled him even more was that his employment contract had been renewed for another year shortly before he was sent home. Within weeks of renewing the contract, however, he found his name on a list of workers going on ‘long leave’. Having previously experienced a similar forced exit with another employer during the FIFA World Cup period, Balram suspected that ‘long leave’ was simply a tactic used to send workers home while avoiding payments of bonuses and benefits. 

He even considered requesting a final exit and claiming all pending dues before leaving Qatar. But he said the company warned that workers who terminated their contracts early would face heavy financial penalties. 

Job insecurity in the Gulf’s ‘safe haven’

Migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) say the war’s impact has also devastated the hospitality sector, particularly in Dubai, the most popular tourist destination in the Gulf region. As the conflict escalated, Dubai faced a steep decline in the number of tourists. 

Workers describe once-crowded hotels and restaurants sitting nearly empty as tourists avoided travel to the region. As business slowed, hotels reportedly began placing workers on ‘standby’ without regular duties and wages. As the conflict dragged on and recovery remained uncertain, many workers were eventually sent on indefinite unpaid leave without any clear return date. “Companies have increased redundancies, occupancy rates have declined, and the number of tourists has also decreased,” said Ramkaji Khada, joint secretary of Nepal’s foreign ministry. “Due to reduced tourist mobility, those working in hotels and restaurants or in service sectors have been affected.”

Bigyan had been working as a cook at one of the hotels operated by Jumeirah Group in Dubai. After a series of Iranian attacks near the hotel area where he worked, he said, management drastically reduced staffing. “In the first two weeks of March, only five people at a time were called for duty from our team of around 20,” he said. “Even those five workers were rotated, so none of us had regular work.” 

Now, he says, he is not working at all. “The company stopped my duty because there are no guests coming to the hotel,” he said. “I’m still waiting for them to call me back. But I feel like there is very little chance.”

He no longer feels hopeful because Dubai has not fully recovered from the economic shock caused by the war. Hotel occupancy rates in the city plummeted as much as in the Covid-19 pandemic era, according to CoStar - Opens in new tab, a platform for commercial real estate information analytics. Industry analysts have warned that tourism recovery could remain slow, as travellers remain hesitant to visit the Gulf region after the conflict. The financial analysis firm Moody’s also projected that hotel occupancy in Dubai could fall to 10 percent - Opens in new tab in the second quarter of the year, compared to 80 percent before the war broke out. 

As hopes for a rapid recovery faded, Bigyan said many of his colleagues were quietly sent home on leave without any fixed return date. Workers who were already on vacation during the attacks were also reportedly told not to come back. Bigyan himself was asked whether he wanted to go back to Nepal, but he decided to wait a few more months. “If I return home now, I’ll eventually need to go to another country anyway, and that will cost a lot of money. So I’m waiting.”

For now, he is staying at a relative’s home in Dubai. 

But for many migrant workers, waiting without income is nearly impossible. Across the Gulf, migrant workers’ visas are closely tied to their employers, who are often responsible for accommodation, transportation, health insurance and, in some cases, meals. Losing a job means losing access to all of those basic necessities as well. “At least I have relatives here who can help me. Otherwise, I would have already returned home like many others,” Bigyan said. 

Another worker, employed as a driver in Dubai’s Jumeirah residential area, described the atmosphere in the city as bleak. “Many residents have already left the city, and those who left earlier have not returned,” he said. “There are no tourists in the city like before. Business is unstable. Many people have become jobless. The situation is very bad right now.”

Because of the decline in visitors, he said his income has been cut nearly in half. “Dubai no longer has the same vibrancy as before,” he said. “If you come to the Jumeirah area, you can see with your own eyes how deeply the war has affected the city.”

Mira Acharya, Director General of Nepal’s Department of Foreign Employment (DOFE), acknowledged that Nepali taxi drivers in the UAE have been among the workers most severely affected by the broader economic effects of the war. Many drivers, she said, rely heavily on tips while earning only a low base salary, despite employment contracts that often guarantee a minimum monthly wage of AED 800 (USD 215) or more. As tourist arrivals in the country declined, some workers reported that companies failed to pay even the contractual base salary. 

Since the conflict began, she said, DOFE has received around 500 emails from Nepali migrant workers reporting that they had been directly affected by the war. Those workers said they had been placed on forced leave, had their working hours reduced, or experienced other disruptions that significantly lowered their earnings.  

Security guards caught in the fallout

Security guards across the Gulf said they continued working during the conflict, often at sensitive sites, but still faced wage cuts, reduced hours, and even forced exits later. 

Mithun had worked for years as a security guard at Kuwait International Airport. During March and April, the airport was repeatedly struck by Iranian drones and missiles, inflicting damages to terminal buildings, fuel tanks, and radar systems. Passenger flights were suspended for weeks, severely disrupting airport operations. As activity slowed, Mithun said, his employer reduced his working hours – and his pay. “My duty hours were reduced; so were my wages,” he said. “I had nothing to do with the war, but I suffered because of it.” 

Since March, he said, his employer, Brinks Kuwait, cut security guards’ duties roughly in half. Some guards were transferred elsewhere because there was not enough work available at the airport. Workers were placed on shorter shifts and told to take unpaid days off because of reduced operational demand.

But Mithun said he later figured out that his employer continued receiving full payments from airport authorities while paying workers significantly less. “This is how they cheated us during the war,” he said. “Why did they take money in our name, but never gave it to us? This is unacceptable.”

Even guards stationed far from direct attack zones faced the consequences. Nilkantha had been working as a security guard at a government building in the UAE. About a month after Iran began attacking the UAE, he said, his employer, Emirates Security Services, abruptly sent him, along with many other workers, on ‘forced long leave’. According to him, workers were not given an explanation of why they were being removed from their jobs against their will. 

But he said workers were too afraid to challenge company decisions, because they feared retaliation. “I couldn’t complain. Because I was nothing in front of the company. There was no option but to accept whatever they said.” 

Nilkantha had travelled to the UAE in 2025, paying NPR 700,000 (USD 4,500) in recruitment fees. The recruitment agency had promised him stable work for at least two years. “I never expected to return home in a year without earning any money,” he said. “Who knows what my situation is now?” 

The cost of war, carried home

Nilkantha had taken loans from the local cooperative to cover his recruitment fees. During his first year of employment, his monthly wages of AED 2,500 (USD 600) supported his household expenses, the education of his two sons aged 14 and nine, and the hospital bills of his ageing parents.

Each month, he said, he was struggling to pay interest on the loan and some part of the principal. “Now, I don’t even have money to pay the interest,” he said. “If I could have stayed for two years continuously, I would have been close to clearing the loan. But they forced me to leave within a year. How can I repay such a huge debt now?”

Balram also lost his monthly income of QR 1,000 (USD 275) after being sent home. Within two months, he said, he had already begun borrowing money from his friends to support his family.

“The company sent me home without additional benefits or bonuses,” said Balram, a father of two. “All workers go there to earn money. How can families survive when workers suddenly lose their jobs? Right now, my situation is very bad.”  

For Karma, too, overseas employment had long been a lifeline. 

While working in Qatar, he earned nearly QR 1,200 (USD 330) a month – enough to support his wife and two children in the remote mountains of Nepal. He had spent more than a decade working abroad to pull his family out of poverty and provide better education for his son and daughter. Now, as his daughter prepares for university, his financial burden has only grown heavier. “I had gone abroad because of our bad economic conditions,” he said. “But war has brought the worst time for people like me. Now how will I provide for my family?”

Back home in Nepal, Karma says no one from the company has told him whether he will ever be called back to Qatar. Despite the danger of working in Ras Laffan during wartime, he says he would still return if given the chance – because poverty at home feels just as frightening as conflict in the Gulf. But he does not know what the future holds for him. “Will they invite me again or not? I have no idea,” he said. “I think I’ve lost the job completely.” 

* Names of workers have been changed to protect their identities.

** Companies named were contacted for comments and no response was received at the time of publication

[Photo courtesy Shramik Sanjal - Opens in new tab]