Misuse of Migrant Labour - A Rant

Having been there at Easter, it doesn’t come as any surprise that Dubai is apparently the fastest-growing city on earth, and is the world’s biggest (and most opulent) building site. Allegedly fifty per cent of the world's supply of cranes are now at work in Dubai. I’d vouch for that. The Sheikh wants Dubai to be a the top island resort with underwater hotels, chains of theme parks, the Burj Dubai (planned to be the world’s tallest building), not to mention the palms (three I think at the last count) and ‘the world’.

What also doesn’t surprise me, having seen it all first hand, is the reports of unrest and strikes coming from the Emirate this week. Migrant workers do most of the construction work; in fact migrant workers comprise nearly 90 percent of the workforce in the UAE. The labourers seemed to come mostly from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, even China. I struggle to remember if we met an Emirati whilst we were there!

This week, rioting apparently started when buses due to take labourers to their residential camp at the end of their shift were delayed. These workers spend hours on bus trips to and from the sites each day. We used to watch them from the comfort of our 5+* air conditioned hotel room, queuing for their buses at the end of their shifts, lined up in long rows, all dressed identically in blue or orange boiler suits. And the buses were never-ending, they ferried workers back and forwards all day and all night, the seats never got a chance to cool down; as one person got out, the next got in.

It was a bit like that with the beds too I believe.

Out in the desert are the labour camps that are home to the migrant workers. They sleep eight to a room, as one person gets up to work, someone else is falling into the same bed, exhausted. And all this to work long shifts for poor wages and with no job security.

When you start to do a bit of research, you find out all kinds of information, for example, last year 84 workers committed suicide. Independent research published in local media found that there were 880 accidental deaths at construction sites in 2004. These numbers were compiled by surveying embassies of countries that have large number of workers in the UAE. Government figures, on the other hand, state that the total number of deaths in 2004 was only 34.

Technically, the labour laws in Dubai offer some protection to workers: a day's shift should be only eight hours with overtime limited to two hours and paid at a higher rate; there should be medical care, proper housing, 30 days' annual holiday and employees should not be made to work during the searing midday heat in the summer. I can guarantee the last one wasn’t strictly enforced, when we were there construction was going on 24/7, right above our suntanned noses.