More than 22,000 Moroccan workers have been stuck abroad since Morocco suspended flights into the country in mid-March due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Over the last month they have been demonstrating, demanding to be allowed to return home.
"Please, we want to go home," said one unidentified Moroccan man to the AP news agency during a demonstration of about 20 people outside the Moroccan consulate in Algeciras in southern Spain on Monday. Another man told AP, "we can’t stand it anymore."
The two men part of between 22,000 and 27,800 Moroccan migrant workers stuck abroad after their country shut down all passenger flights into Morooco in mid-March in an effort to restrict the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Stuck abroad
As
foreigners stuck in Morocco have gradually been repatriated,
Moroccans stuck abroad have watched, and waited, in vain, says the
French-language online portal EcoActu (Economy and News), which said at the end of April that many were hoping to be repatriated before
the holy month of Ramadan was due to begin. But that didn't happen.
Both AP and EcoActu report that some of those stranded have ended up having to sleep rough "under the star" - particularly the so-called "day workers" in the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, which employs thousands of Moroccan workers every day, who travel back and forth across the border.
According to AP, some of them had "crossed into the Spanish North African enclave Ceuta one morning in March, to go to work, expecting to be home for dinner – and instead have been stuck in Spain for two months."
Sleeping in the streets
They further complained they have had to sleep in the streets for weeks before the Spanish authorities reportedly provided a gym as temporary accommodation for them.
Most countries have suspended the majority of flights and have closed their borders during this time, but most have allowed its own nationals back into the country. Despite numerous demonstrations around the world, the Moroccan government, has, so far, refused to allow the workers to return. It is reportedly the only country in the world to have denied access to its own nationals in the midst of the pandemic.
Among
those stuck abroad, reports AP, are "undocumented migrants whose
jobs have dried up amid the economic shutdown, Moroccan tourists
whose visas have now expired, and legal migrants who want to flee
countries like Spain and France out of fear of the virus, which has
hit European countries harder than Morocco."
Date unclear when repatriations to begin
AP reported that Moroccan Prime Minister Saadeddine El Otmani said repatriations would only begin once the borders were once again open, which could be "months away." Morocco says it took its decision to close its borders even to its own nationals abroad because it feared its health system would be overwhelmed if it suffered similar levels of outbreak as those suffered in Italy, Spain, France and the UK.
Towards the end of April, according to Middle East Monitor, Moroccan Foreign Affairs Minister Nasser Bourita promised that they would pay for the accommodation of just under 4,000 foreign nationals stuck abroad.
Bourita agreed that the Moroccans had a "constitutional right to return," but added that the process of return would be gradual. He failed to specify a date for when that process would begin.