“One of the world’s largest construction booms is feeding off of workers in Dubai, but they’re treated as less than human. It’s no surprise that some workers have started rioting in protest. What’s surprising is that the government of the UAE is doing nothing to solve the problem.”
Sarah Leah Whitson,
Middle East and [...]
Archive for the ‘UAE’ Category
Bridge collapse in Dubai kills 7 workers and injures 15
November 9th, 2007 | UAE, Workers, Working conditions | Discuss (0)From the BBC:
Dubai’s economy has boomed in recent years, fuelled largely by a construction industry reliant on low-paid workers, many from South Asia. The labourers were employed by the Wade Adams Group, a contracting company based in the Middle East.
More than 40 people were working on the bridge at the time of the collapse, police [...]
October 31st - Kuwait Times Report
Four Thousand Asian Laborers in Dubai are reportedly facing expulsion after they staged illegal strikes at the weekend over poor wages and working condition in the booming gulf city state. The authorities in the United Arab Emirates tool the decision after several thousand manual workers downed tools and reportedly [...]
180 Workers to be Deported
March 29th, 2007 | Abusive employers, Gulf, News, UAE, Workers | Discuss (0)“So what?” many would ask. “That happens all the time here in the Arabian Gulf,” some would add.
I’m guessing that the fact that THESE 180 workers are to be deported without having been paid for the past 4 months is also a normal thing here in the Gulf. These men, all of Afghani nationality, came [...]
The View Point shares with us the following report, written and photographed by Mohamed Somji.
Meet Zia: he is from Pakistan and is working as a carpenter for a construction company in Dubai. He is one of several people that I met while shooting for the photojournalism workshop last August; I went to visit him and [...]
Dubai court jails couple for torturing maid
March 19th, 2007 | Abusive employers, Gulf, Legal cases, Rape, UAE | Discuss (0)The following article is reported by Agence France Presse (AFP) and has been republished in The Daily Star -
A couple who tried to treat a Filipino maid like an inmate of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison have been jailed in Dubai for three years for torture and sexual harassment, a newspaper reported Wednesday. The victim, [...]
In Pursuit of Justice reports -
First batch of workers deported for “violent” protest. A total of 185 (out of 8000 protesters) will be eventually deported. Notice that the article doesn’t describe the “violence” that the workers were engaged in. This is the only article I could find with some detail of that [...]