With its 1,100 beds spread over three buildings, the Komitat Bucharest-South workers’ hostel is a real hub of cultures. Nepalese, Indians, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans… Immigrants from Asia are constantly entering and leaving, in mid-March, dormitories with cameras and security, installed in a residential suburb of the Romanian capital. “I arrived six months ago to work for [le livreur à vélo] Glovo »says Naresh Chaudhary, a 38-year-old Nepalese man, between two phone calls to his mother back home, from the room he shares with three other Nepalese people.
This father claims to earn twice as much as in Nepal to deliver hot meals to the people of Bucharest, who have gradually become accustomed to these delivery men who do not speak a word of Romanian. “This is my first time here.”, explains Mr. Chaudhary, who previously visited Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. Like all his neighbors, he landed “thanks to a recruitment agency” in this Eastern European country which faces a glaring labor shortage, due to the departure of millions of its own inhabitants to Western Europe since its accession to the European Union , in 2007.
At his side, another Nepalese, Sherpa Pemba, 32, also admits to having never heard of Romania before arriving, but claims to find the “Friendly Romanians”. Even if he quickly became disillusioned with his working conditions. Even though he works more than eleven hours a day for Glovo, he says he can never manage to get enough deliveries to exceed the minimum income required by his employer. “I still haven’t been able to send money to my family”he complains, despite a contract which had guaranteed him 550 euros of monthly salary.
“Working population problem”
“They should spend more time in the city center to receive more orders”says Valeriu Nicolae, the director of the home, to justify these complaints which would be “isolated cases” among the more than 120,000 non-European foreigners who now reside in Romania. This former diplomat had a hollow nose when he founded his private dormitory company in 2016, which offers Romanian companies accommodation for their workers for just 6 euros per night. Komitat now provides accommodation for more than 4,000 workers, largely Asian, who work in particular “in Marriott Hotels, at McDonald’s or in Delhaize supermarkets”.
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