REPORT - Asians working in Romania; What do they do in their free time

The presence of Asian workers on construction sites, in traffic on scooters and bicycles, in restaurant kitchens and in many other places has become a habit. Discreet, they go about their business and generally work seriously. We know very little about them.

For now, we are like water and oil, we do not mix.

After a period of accommodation, foreign workers have begun to coagulate into small communities and can be seen more and more often in the parks of the Capital, where they practice various sports or simply gather and look at the ground or the sky.

If cricket is played in the Văcăreşti area, in the Drumul Taberei Park there is a group of volleyball players, who attract attention. They are small in height but have impressive detente and play very well. I watched them at work and they are simply spectacular. They smile when they notice that they are being observed, but they avoid dialogue as much as possible.

I talked to two local policemen and they told us that they come to the sports fields very often, they do their job, they don't cause any problems, the majority are from Bangladesh, there is also a girl with them, most likely from Pakistan, but the leader is a young Ukrainian, a special athlete, who speaks to them in Romanian. The Ukrainian is unapproachable, as are most of the other players.

After a few gropings, I talked to a construction worker from Bangladesh. He is talkative, but he doesn't want to give his name, "it's a secret", he says this with a laugh. "They have been here for several years. Too many. We gather in the park because we like to live and work outdoors. I wanted to play football, but I saw that you don't really use the volleyball court and it's better not to compete. You are good, a lot of you, but there are also bad people". Here he tries to enter the street of racism, his, not ours, but quickly moves on to another subject. In fact, when I asked him if I could play with them, he confessed to me that he didn't really want to mix with "foreigners", here referring strictly to Romanians. "I play volleyball for myself. I used to play on the beach at home, although I like football the most. I work to save money to move. I also collect bottles from garbage cans, I make two or three dollars a day, I avoid them, I collect in the dark, so as not to argue with anyone. For now!" When I ask him what he means by for now, he laughs and says that he used the wrong word. "This money, from the bottles, is for my mother, I collect almost a salary from my country".

The fact is that in recent weeks I have noticed, on the subway but also near the large shopping centers, more and more young Asians collecting plastic or glass containers, thrown in the trash.

The "volleyball player" has a blue T-shirt, on which something is written in Bengali. I ask him what it means, "it's blue because I couldn't find green", comes the answer, after which he attacks with a question: "What do you know about Bangladesh?". "Pretty much nothing, beyond a few geography things. It's just that the Nobel Prize winner for literature, Rabindranath Tagore, wrote in Bengali, your official language".

To clarify, 168,000,000 Bengalis live in Bangladesh and 107,000,000, in India.

He laughs again. "Here you can laugh, but the food is not good at all. You have a lot of food, but you don't know how to use spices at all. You don't even have good spices."

To the question "what drove them to leave home?" The short answer is "poverty," but there are longer versions.

• $95 monthly salary

In 2023, for two weeks, thousands of garment workers in Bangladesh took to the streets, demanding higher wages and better working conditions. The protests, which quickly escalated, led to violent clashes with the police, resulting in three deaths and numerous injuries. Bangladesh is one of the world's largest textile producers, supplying clothes to international brands such as H&M, Zara and Levi's. The salary of a garment worker was about $95 per month. After the protests, the government announced an increase to $113. Protesters rejected the offer, calling it insufficient, and demanded a doubling of the minimum wage to $208 a month. Protests continued, but the government's offer remained, and wage increases have not kept pace with inflation, which reached its highest level in 12 years in 2022-2023, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. The cost of living has become a growing burden for workers in the sector, who say their current incomes no longer allow them to cover their basic needs. The textile industry is the backbone of Bangladesh's economy, accounting for 85% of the country's exports and employing about 4 million people. However, living standards remain low and working conditions are often precarious. Bangladesh has the sixth lowest average wage in the world. Its economy is dominated by agriculture, ra, which employs over 45% of the workforce, but contributes only 17% to GDP. Industry, including the textile sector, represents 28% of GDP, and the service sector, although it employs only 25% of the population, generates over half of the gross domestic product. Although it is a predominantly agrarian country, Bangladesh fails to produce the bare minimum of food for the entire population, due to monsoon rains that destroy crops and cause floods.

• 100,000 new foreign workers admitted to the labor market

The General Inspectorate for Immigration informs that, pursuant to art. 108 of the Constitution of Romania, republished, and art. 29 para. (1) of Government Ordinance no. 25/2014 on the employment and posting of foreigners on the territory of Romania and for the amendment and completion of certain normative acts regarding the regime of foreigners in Romania, approved by Law no. 14/2016, with subsequent amendments and completions, the Government of Romania adopts Government Decision no. 1,338 of December 29, 2023 on establishing the quota of workers newly admitted to the labor market in 2024, this being published, on January 4 this year, in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 7. The document establishes, for the year 2024, a quota of 100,000 workers newly admitted to the labor market in Romania. The same figures were maintained for 2025.

The decision to establish this year's quota was taken taking into account Romania's economic development potential, the need to ensure the workforce required in some sectors of activity or professions, which cannot be covered by Romanian workers, but also to prevent situations in which foreigners work in Romania without legal forms. According to data communicated by the General Inspectorate for Immigration, by November 30, 2024, 99,268 employment/posting permits were issued. In 2023, 101,254 employment/posting permits were issued, in 2022, 108,882 employment/posting permits were issued, in 2021, 49,954 employment/posting permits were issued. In 2024, of the almost 100,000 people from outside the European Union employed, approximately 65,000 left our country. The explanation is simple, Asian workers see Romania as a transit country to the West. The countries that provided the most foreign workers active in our country in 2024 are Nepal (20,636), Sri Lanka (16,115), India (8,306), Bangladesh (6,298) and Turkey (6,240). At the end of last year, 150,000 foreign workers were listed in the official statistics.