Author: ajohnstone

COVID-19 and the Sweat-Shops

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Malaysia’s medical glove factories, which make most of the world’s critical hand protection, are operating at half capacity just when they’re most needed.

Health care workers snap gloves on as the first line of protection against catching COVID-19 from patients, and they’re crucial to protecting patients as well. But medical-grade glove supplies are running low globally, even as more feverish, sweating and coughing patients arrive in hospitals by the day.
Malaysia is by far the world’s largest medical glove supplier, producing as many as three out of four gloves on market.

The Malaysian government ordered factories to halt all manufacturing starting March 18. Then, one by one, those that make products deemed essential, including medical gloves, have been required to seek exemptions to reopen, but only with half of their workforce to reduce the risk of transmitting the new virus, according to industry reports and insider sources. The government says companies must meet domestic demand before exporting anything. 



Other countries making gloves including Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey and especially China are also seeing their manufacturing disrupted due to the virus.



Other countries making gloves including Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey and especially China are also seeing their manufacturing disrupted due to the virus. U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Tuesday it was lifting a block on imports from one leading Malaysian medical glove manufacturer, WRP Asia Pacific, where workers had allegedly been forced to pay recruitment fees as high as $5,000 in their home countries, including Bangladesh and Nepal. 



  The industry has a history of mistreating migrant workers who toil over hand-sized molds as they’re dipped in melted latex or rubber, hot and exhausting work. 



“Most of the workers who are producing the gloves that are essential in the global COVID-19 endemic are still at high risk of forced labor, often in debt bondage,” said Andy Hall, a migrant workers rights specialist. “These workers, some of the invisible heroes of modern times in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, deserve much more respect for the essential work they do,” said Hall. 

Most of the workers in the Malaysian factories are migrants, and live in crowded hostels at the factories where they work. Like everyone in Malaysia, they’re now locked down because of the virus.

The Digital Divide in Education

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More than half of the country’s students have been sent home to prevent the spread of disease and instructed to continue their education via video chats and message boards.



But nationwide, more than 4m households with school-age children don’t have home internet. Study after study shows that people don’t have internet because they can’t afford it, and because systemic racial discrimination blocks them from subscribing.



 Poor families and people of color are particularly affected – only 56% of households making less than $20,000 have home broadband, and black and Hispanic households lag behind their white counterparts even when we control for income differences.



Even among students who theoretically have access, not all access is equal. According to census research, 8% of households who have internet rely exclusively on mobile broadband. Once again, low-income people and communities of color are disproportionately more likely to be mobile-only broadband adopters.



This also has particular impacts on students – only about half of school-age children who live in mobile-only households personally use the internet at home, perhaps because of the difficulty of sharing mobile devices. Mobile services are often limited by data caps, and mobile devices can make certain tasks incredibly challenging. Imagine studying for your calculus exam or writing a world-history paper on a cellphone. This is a reality for a lot of students who don’t have home broadband.



When schools move education online, poor students and kids of color fall behind. This compounds generations of systemic racial and economic inequities.



 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/23/us-students-are-being-asked-to-work-remotely-but-22-of-homes-dont-have-internet

The Gig Economy Workers Forgotten

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According to the Office for National Statistics, there are 5 million self-employed people in the UK, who make up 15% of the labour market. They feel they have been forgotten, after hearing about the latest financial measures announced by the UK government.

The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), which represents gig economy workers, has announced that it is suing the government over its failure to protect the wages and jobs of millions of workers during the pandemic, as well as its failure to ensure the health and safety of those still employed through proper sick pay.
IWGB General Secretary Dr Jason Moyer-Lee said: “No one wants to be litigating right now. We all have extremely pressing things to be getting on with, but we also can’t stand by and watch our members being driven into financial destitution because the government has simply forgotten about them. The low paid precarious workers must have the means to follow public health advice and continue to pay their bills and put food on the table. Right now, they don’t.”



https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52005581

The Plague of Locusts

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In these days of COVID-19 crisis it is easy to forget that many other threats are happening to the welfare and well-being of people.



The FAO has warned that the food security of 25 million people could be endangered by the locusts, which according to the agency’s locust monitoring service have been spotted in at least 10 countries over recent months. One swarm recently reported in Kenya covered an area the size of Luxembourg. The current crisis is considered the worst in decades, and there are fears it could last longer than previous locust outbreaks.



Climate change created unprecedented conditions for the locusts to breed in the usually barren desert of the Arabian gulf, according to experts, and the insects were then able to spread through Yemen, where civil war has devastated the ability to control locust populations.

It was Cyclone Mekunu, which struck in 2018, that allowed several generations of desert locusts the moist sand and vegetation to thrive in the desert between Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman known as the Empty Quarter, breeding and forming into crop-devouring swarms, said Keith Cressman, locust forecasting expert for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 



 “That’s fine, that’s quite good in itself, but just about when those conditions are drying out and the breeding is coming to an end, a second cyclone came to the area,” he said. 



“That allowed the conditions to continue to be favourable and another generation of breeding, so instead of increasing 400-fold, they increased 8,000-fold. Usually a cyclone brings favourable conditions for about six months and then the habitat dries out, and so it’s not favourable for reproduction and they die and migrate.”

The amount of cyclones in the area seem to be increasing, said Cressman, making it likely that locust swarms will also become more common.



https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/20/locust-crisis-poses-a-danger-to-millions-forecasters-warn

Wishful Thinking

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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called on the countries of Earth to declare an immediate ceasefire and join together to battle the coronavirus pandemic that is ravaging people and communities across the planet.




“The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war,” said Guterres. “That is why today, I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world.  It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives.”


Guterres said he hoped action taken to stop conflict could help refugees, women, children, and other marginalized communities in warzones get the help they need to survive—including better delivery of humanitarian and medical aid.


“End the sickness of war and fight the disease that is ravaging our world,” said Guterres.  “It starts by stopping the fighting everywhere. Now. That is what our human family needs, now more than ever.”


Cancelled Holidays?

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Under the Package Travel Regulations 2018 package holidaymakers whose trips are cancelled are entitled to all their money back within two weeks of the trip being called off.



An estimated two million overseas package holidays were due to depart in the first 30 days of the government’s warning against non-essential travel, running from 17 March to 16 April 2020. They have all been cancelled – representing around £1bn that the law insists should be paid back to consumers. Many hard-pressed holidaymakers, facing uncertainty about their own incomes, are understandably anxious to get the cash that is due to them.





But The Independent understands that the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, will agree to protect Britain’s beleaguered travel industry.





For travel firms earning no revenue, having to hand back payments for cancelled holidays immediately could force them out of business. Shapps is expected to agree to companies issuing credit notes enabling the holidaymaker to book a new trip within two years. Any customer who does not redeem the voucher can then claim the sum in cash. If the travel firm goes bust in the interim, financial protection will be provided by the government-backed Atol scheme.
The move will anger many travellers who entered into contracts that guaranteed a full refund if the operator called off the holiday. They will instead become unwilling creditors of the company. Until the rules change, a strict entitlement to a cash refund remains despite dozens of travel firms rejecting requests for refunds.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/package-holiday-refund-rules-suspended-abta-coronavirus-a9417261.html

It is always the poor who suffer the most

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Those most vulnerable to the coronavirus are the elderly and people with serious underlying illnesses such as diabetes or cancer. But people who lack access to healthcare, or live in a setting where sanitary systems are not adequately developed, can also be at risk. 

Cecilia Tacoli, Principal researcher, Human Settlements, for International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), said social distancing is “unrealistic”  for the world’s poor. 

“Low-income settlements in cities of low- and middle-income nations are typically very densely populated, with very inadequate provision of basic infrastructure, [water and sanitation] and services [health services], all of which encourage the spread of communicable diseases,” she said.



“The vast majority of the urban poor do not have access to formal employment but rely on casual jobs which only provide meagre incomes. This means that current prescriptions – from washing hands frequently to social isolation and working from home – are unrealistic.”

Tacoli added that although it is clear that the elderly are most at risk globally, the vulnerability of older women could prove disastrous.

“It is worth keeping in mind that throughout the world about three billion people live in such settlements, and that in many cities they are the majority of the population. Older people, especially women, often play a very important role looking after children and ill relatives. These two observations are critical in considering worst-case scenarios,” she said.

“The high density of people and the inability to create effective social distancing are key factors in making transmission more likely,” said Eric Fevre, a professor of veterinary infectious diseases at the University of Liverpool.  Nor are slum communities isolated from the rest of the city, leaving them as vulnerable to the disease as elsewhere.

“In addition, I would add that such settlements are at risk because the people who live there have to be able to access other richer parts of the city for work,” Fevre told Al Jazeera. 

Many residents of such settlements live in extended families but have only a few rooms. Some may have only one. And if the area itself were quarantined, the situation could even become dangerous because any illness could spread quickly through the densely populated area.

It is worse for some

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While the developed world have been cutting interest rates to soften the economic blow of the coronavirus, the  Jubilee Debt Campaign report that borrowing costs were rising sharply for poor countries.



Interest rates rose on average by 3.5 percentage points for low- and middle-income countries since the mid-February and that costs for new borrowing stood at 10%.



At the same time, commodity prices have plunged, with the price of copper down by 21% since the start of 2020, oil 61% lower, and coffee falling by 15%. The Bloomberg commodity price index – which measures a basket of oil, metals and food prices – has dropped 27% since the start of the year and is now at its lowest level since 1986.



Countries were also being hurt by a falling number of overseas visitors, with small island states being particularly badly hit because of their size and economic reliance on tourism.



Tim Jones, policy head at Jubilee Debt Campaign said: “Urgent action is needed to support poorer countries being hit by the economic impacts of coronavirus, including a complete moratorium on debt payments for those most affected. Where economic shocks have pushed countries into debt crisis, the IMF needs to help restructure debt with previous lenders. Otherwise, its loans will just be used to pay off reckless lenders and maintain the debt crises. And the IMF itself needs to cancel debts owed to it by countries suffering the impact of the pandemic.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/22/urgent-call-to-head-off-new-debt-crisis-in-developing-world

More Migrant Misery

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Approximately a million undocumented migrants living under the radar in the UK could be at risk not only of contracting Covid-19 but also of going hungry  because of the crisis created by the pandemic, charities have warned.



Nobody knows exactly how many of these migrants are currently in the UK, as the Home Office does not have comprehensive records of their whereabouts. This group includes asylum seekers whose claims the Home Office has rejected but who are fearful of returning to their home countries and temporary workers whose visas have expired. Estimates are that there could be between 800,000 and 1.2 million of these migrants currently in the UK.



Asylum seekers with an active claim receive meagre support from the Home Office – £37.75 per week – to buy food and other essentials and no-choice accommodation. However, the vast majority of those whose cases have been refused receive no support at all. They are not allowed to work and survive thanks to a network of charities who provide survival packages of cooked meals at day centres, food parcels, secondhand clothing and supermarket vouchers. However, these charities have closed their day centres because of the pandemic
John, a 30-year-old from Cameroon who was refused asylum, lives in Manchester and said the virus had caused a lot of panic among migrants.
“All of the charities and the churches where I used to go to get help with food and other support are shut down now. I was sleeping at Victoria or Piccadilly Stations but the charity RAPAR that I’m a member of has found me some temporary accommodation. I can’t return to my country because the military is killing people there. We are all in a state of trauma.”


Mohammed, 30, was refused asylum despite coming from Eritrea, where the Home Office will not send people back to. He is based in London and says he is “desperate and struggling to survive” during the pandemic. 



“Every place where we got support is closed now. My friend gave me a bike because I have no money for bus fares. I’m cycling round everywhere looking for food but can’t find anything. If I can just find enough food to eat once a day, I think I will survive but I have not managed to find very much to eat. I’m not worried about coronavirus, I will accept whatever comes into my life with the virus. But I am worried that I will die from hunger.”



RAPAR’s chair of trustees, Dr Rhetta Moran is calling on the government to support undocumented, displaced and destitute people – those most vulnerable to Covid-19 – to come forward for safe housing without fear of being locked up.



Haringey Migrant Support Service has created an emergency fund for its homeless and destitute migrant visitors who they were previously supporting with food bank vouchers, food parcels and clothes. They were also providing lunch at their drop-in centres, which are not currently operating during the pandemic.

Dozens of NGOs are currently calling on government to provide support for destitute migrants. The Public Interest Law Centre, Project 17, Migrants’ Rights Network and others have produced an open letter to councils calling on them to establish Covid-19 homeless task forces for this group catering for such people.



It is unclear whether an initiative due to be announced on Monday to house homeless people in empty hotels will include destitute migrants or only British street homeless people. The latter have access to housing and other benefits, the former do not.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/23/million-undocumented-migrants-could-go-hungry-say-charities

Our Sick Society

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Diehard supporters of capitalism are beginning to fight back against the government’s apparent decision to put people or at least the health service before the health of the capitalist economy.

Sparked off by an article in Saturday’s Times by Matthew Paris entitled “Crashing the economy will also cost lives”, a debate is raging on “crashing the economy versus sacrificing lives” with some actually arguing that minimising deaths today should not be the objective.

It is true that crashing the capitalist economy, i.e. provoking a slump, will also cost lives, as always does happen in a slump through increased ill health and suicides of those who lose their jobs and so their previous level of income.

So that’s all capitalism has to offer: less deaths today and more tomorrow or more deaths today and less deaths tomorrow. 
We can let the sick supporters of this sick system argue which of these is the lesser evil.

The very fact that this is the choice under capitalism is itself an indictment of the profit-driven system. And another good reason why it has to go.

In socialism if a pandemic breaks out (as it might) this wouldn’t be the choice as minimising deaths today could be the objective without endangering future production as this would be directly for use and not for sale and profit as now under capitalism. Some adjustments would have to be made but nobody would need to be denied access to what they needed to live and enjoy life as the direct link between taking part in production and what you get will have been broken.


ALB

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