A Belgian media investigation has revealed that the majority of food delivery drivers working in the EU capital are illegal immigrants using “fake” accounts.
The media investigation by the newspaper Le Soir saw journalists interview dozens of different delivery drivers working on the streets of Brussels and found that all of them were young men between the ages of 18 and 30 and at least half admitted they were in the country illegally.
According to a report from the public broadcaster RTBF, the delivery drivers come from North and West Africa, Pakistan, Syria, Afghanistan, and South America and often do not speak either French, Dutch, Spanish or English.
Nada Ladraa, a leader for the Christian Workers’ Movement, explained that “undocumented delivery drivers today make up the majority of the workforce of the platforms in Brussels,” and said that the coronavirus pandemic and a worsening of working conditions had led more and more illegals to take up the jobs as others supposedly did not want to.
Deliveroo, one of the major food delivery services operating in Belgium, stated that it has a zero-tolerance policy toward illegal activity and said it would stop working with anyone who allowed their account to be used by people not eligible to work in Belgium.
However, the company also noted that “To date, we have received very few concrete reports of such illegal activities that would allow us to act. When they reached us, we took the measures imposed and collaborated with the police.”
Uber Eats, meanwhile, stated that it has a system that requires the courier to take a selfie in order to prove their identity and if the selfie does not match the person tied to the account, the account is deleted.
Illegal migrant delivery drivers are not a phenomenon unique to Belgium and are present in other European countries, such as France where an illegal migrant Uber Eats driver was arrested for raping a woman in her home in 2019.
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