Vanishing Foreign Workers Leave Albania’s Short-Staffed Businesses Frustrated

Lulu and Tutu left the hotel at the dead of night, leaving behind their passports along with their employment contract. Kryeziu notified the police, but they were unable to find out where they went.

Albanian businesses regularly employ foreign workers from countries that are poorer than Albania, which is still a developing country with a yearly GPD per capita of just 6,000 euros and a monthly average salary of some 450 euros.

Albania's GPD is just a third of the average European Union member states. However, countries such Bangladesh or Nepal are far poorer than Albania.

"They [the workers] use Albania as jumping point to go to Europe," one of the waiters, an Albanian, told BIRN at Kryeziu's hotel.

Keeping the travel documents of migrant workers under lock and key, as in this case, is a controversial practice.

Oil-rich Middle Eastern countries have a reputation for this, and it has been criticized as a violation of workers' human rights, exploiting the poverty and desperation of some of the poorest populations in the world.

Albania's tourism sector is in dire need of cheap unqualified labour, as Albanians, although poor themselves and with a high level of unemployment, prefer to emigrate elsewhere in Europe instead.

During the last several years, some employers have attempted to resolve the problem by importing foreign workers.

But the process is not cheap. Bosses have to pay the travel costs for long-distance flights and provide food and shelter for the migrants.

Some of them have told BIRN that they have effectively lost money when these migrants left without notice for richer Western European countries, where even the minimum salaries are as much as four time higher than those on offer in Albania.<...