Coronavirus: Hubei’s migrant workers ‘living in fear’ as debts mount under lockdown
- Sweeping coronavirus containment measures, including transport restrictions, have trapped nearly 60 million people in Hubei province
- Among them are scores of rural migrant workers who are struggling to pay debts because they have been unable to return to their jobs
Trapped under a lockdown and unable to return to work, Cao Xier is one of millions of people struggling with no income and growing personal debt in China’s coronavirus ground zero.
“We have never experienced panic like this before,” he said from Caodian, a poor rural part of the province.
“My brother-in-law says if officials don’t let us go [back to work] in early April, he will attempt to break out because having no income to feed our families or pay our loans is as horrible as having the virus.”
The coronavirus, which has infected more than 80,000 people and killed over 3,200 people in the mainland, has severely disrupted China since late January, cutting it off from the rest of the world and sending the economy into free fall in the first two months of the year.
More than 90 per cent of large firms in the country have resumed operations, but just under 70 per cent of small and medium sized businesses have returned, according to research firm Trivium China.