A S I A
Far from Curbing HIV/AIDS, Forced Testing of Migrant Workers Fuels It
by Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK — A practice common in some Asian countries — forcing migrant workers to face mandatory HIV/AIDS tests — is bound to hasten the spread of the disease than curb it, say experts and officials at a conference on migrant workers here.
These policies spark fear through an already vulnerable group of people, Gunnar Walzhol, an HIV/AIDS specialist at the International Labour Organisation (ILO), said at the conference on migrant labour policies in Asia held Jun. 30-Jul.2.
"The migrant workers may hide, not seek treatment and avoid going for required testing in order to keep their jobs," he told participants who included government officials, employers and workers from 21 countries in Asia and the Pacific.
Such policies also perpetuate discrimination, added Sajida Ally of the Asian Migrant Centre (AMC), a Hong Kong-based non-governmental organisation. "Migrant workers are sent back if they test HIV-positive in Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan."
As it is, migrant workers are subject to HIV tests before they can work in these labour-receiving countries and secure extensions on their work permits. But the Asian countries that put migrant labour through such screening are part of a wider global pattern that involves 60 countries, states the U.N. labour agency.
The ILO used the conference to lobby Asian labour policymakers to abolish the mandatory tests — often also required by the hiring companies overseas — and replace them with a worker-friendly alternative. What is best, according to the ILO, is the confidential treatment of medical information and outreach programmes to the most vulnerable workers.
"We also want the countries that receive migrant workers to provide them with information about their rights and about HIV," Walzhol told IPS. "The limited access to such material makes the migrant workers vulnerable."
What should also be avoided countries' classification migrant workers as a "high-risk group" in the way sex workers are treated, he added. "This will backfire, because it will inhibit access to prevention and treatment."
The situation of undocumented workers is even more vulnerable, since they would be even less in a position to have access to health services in the host country and would fear seeking treatment for fear of being deported, for instance.
The ILO's push for a more sensitive approach to HIV/AIDS has already found favour in the Philippines, a country that is said to be the world's largest exporter of organised labour and is a major source of migrant labour to the Middle East, East Asia, Europe and the United States. Of this South-east Asian country's 35 million labour force, one in five people, or 7.4 million, are classified as overseas workers.
"We support the ILO's initiatives to provide assistance to protect and prevent migrant workers from HIV," Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz, head of the government-run Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), told IPS.
"The awareness that we give our workers when they leave should be matched by similar efforts in the host country," added Dimapilis-Baldoz, whose agency is the premier body that processes the documents of more than 800,000 Filipinos who leave for overseas jobs as nurses, construction workers, engineers and domestic workers each year.
"This should not be seen as a problem for one country but for all countries," she added.
The U.N. labour agency's appeal stems from indicators that the Asia-Pacific is witnessing an "alarming spread" of HIV/AIDS. As significant are reports that the tide of migrant and mobile labour shows no sign of ebbing, given the pace of economic activity in the region.
The increasing number of people living with HIV in countries like China, India, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea has been cited by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
In December, the U.N. agency reported that close to one million people had HIV in 2002, thus increasing to 7.2 million the number of people in Asia and the Pacific living with the pandemic. During that year, UNAIDS added, 490,000 people were estimated to have died of AIDS.
According to ILO reports, from 1995 to 1999 close to two million Asian workers left their countries every year for work abroad secured through a formal process, many of them for unskilled work.
"Contemporary labour migration in Asia has a very bottom-heavy structure dominated by the movement of workers in blue-collar occupations," states the ILO's Manolo Abella in a paper on the 'Complexity and Diversity of Asian Migration' distributed at the conference.
Furthermore, research by the AMC indicates that in the countries that make up the greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) — Burma, southern China, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam — there could be an estimated 1.6 million to two million undocumented migrant workers.
What adds to the vulnerability of migrant workers to risks like HIV are their being away from their spouses and partners at home, loneliness, which impacts on their behaviour, and social and cultural norms that may be different to what they are familiar with at home, states the ILO.
"Women are particularly vulnerable in Asia because of the low socio-economic status they have in the region," said Walzholz.
The bulk of the women in the migrant labour force are employed as domestic workers, in the entertainment sector, in nursing, in factories and in agriculture.
Strong worker-sensitive policies are needed to assist them, said Dimapilis-Baldoz. "Things are still fluid at the moment in the way the migrant workers are treated for HIV."
