Ukranian woman dies of coronavirus in Erbil

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The mourning family of a Ukrainian woman who worked at a beauty salon in Erbil and passed away weeks after contracting the coronavirus, call on the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to send back the body or the ashes of their daughter to Ukraine.

Zinaida Kavalyova, who came to Erbil in October of last year to work as a nail technician, tested positive for the coronavirus in July, her brother Yuri Kavalyova told Rudaw's Shahyan Tahseen on Thursday.

“In the beginning, Zinaida was supposed to work for three months, but then she decided to extend the period and continued working,” he said.

Zinaida complained about her workplace and the accommodation the salon owner, Shayda Abdulkarim, had provided for her and her colleagues. Zinaida was going to travel home after her contract ended, according to her brother, but she later tested positive for coronavirus and passed away on Saturday.

There is a high demand for Ukrainian nail technicians in the Kurdistan Region, especially with the number of nail spas opening across the Region. New types of nail services, such as mini-sessions and mobile manicures, and pedicures, also drove their employment growth with very few locals filling that occupation.

“We have proof, she [Zinaida] fought with a Russian worker when she first started working and left work, even though we provided her the residency permit,” Abdulkarim said.

“Later she came back to us with a very good salary. We even have videos where we are signing the contract with laughter,” she added.

Rima, who also works at the same beauty salon, shared screenshots of Abdulkarim pressuring her into going to work while Rima was sick with the coronavirus.

Abdulkarim, who claims that all her employees are all legally registered, denied the screenshots, saying “these foreigners drink [alcohol]. Most mornings they message me saying they are not coming to work because they are drunk. I told her to come to work to see her situation.”

Migrant workers in the Kurdistan Region are vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and trafficking because of limited oversight by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, the minister Kwestan Mohammed said last year.

Only four percent of foreign workers who enter Kurdistan do so through the ministry while the rest arrive through private recruitment firms, the Ministry of Interior, or illegally through trafficking networks, she added.

Director of the General Directorate of Labor and Social Insurance, Arif Hito, said Zinaida doesn’t have a work permit while questioning how she got into the Region.

According to article 23 of the Labor Law, no foreigners can start working in Iraq and the Region unless they have obtained their working permit from the Ministry of Labor.

“No one can get into the Region without a kafil [sponsor],” he said, noting that usually in similar cases where a foreign worker dies, the person who sponsored them is in charge of sending their body back home.

The Kurdistan Region has been called a Middle Eastern hub for trafficking because of its relaxed visa rules and the problem is compounded by the kafala residency system, whereby a worker is tied to their employer through immigration sponsorship. Some 100 employment agencies are bringing tens of thousands of foreign workers into the Kurdistan Region and Iraq annually.

Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery that shackles millions of people worldwide and targets society’s most vulnerable populations, including foreign workers, the poor, women, and children. The KRG passed Iraq’s law criminalizing trafficking in persons in 2018.

Additional reporting by Shahyan Tahseen and Dlnia Rahman

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