Bahraini authorities announced the ‘zero tolerance’ policy back in November last year after a reported 33 work-related transport accidents claimed 8 lives in the first quarter of the year alone. Two years ago three workers were killed and 21 injured in a road accident after being transported in an open truck. Companies who violated the proposed ban were to be fined BD100 (US$265)

Construction firms were warned in April 2008 that they had until the end of the year to replace open trucks with buses for transporting their workers, but many still refused to accept the new regulations. Aparently the cost of providing covered buses for workers will set companies around BD1 million (that’s about $2.7 billion). One can’t help feeling that this is a slightly overblown and misleading figure

Bahrain Contractors’ Society president Nedham Kameshki said the move would have major implications for the construction sector.

“There are more than 10,000 contractors who have commercial registrations,” he told the GDN.

“The big contractors have to buy 30 to 40 buses each and the small contractor at least one.

“At an average of five buses per contractor, the decision will force about 50,000 buses onto Bahrain’s already congested roads during peak hours.”

Mr Kameshki claimed there was no need for the new rule, saying the maximum transporting time in Bahrain was about 20 minutes.

“Buses are good for people who work in offices,” he added.

(Full story here)

Why 50,000 airconditioned buses would be any worse in a Bahraini traffic jam than the existing rickety fleet of open lorries is something of a mystery. Then again, workers presumably can’t be crammed like animals into a safe and modern bus, which means more buses hitting the roads.

The government’s inaction has been slammed by human rights groups: (See Gulf Daily News articles here

“They (companies) were given enough time and several notices before finally deciding to implement the open truck ban,” said Migrant Workers Protection Society (MWPS) action committee head Marietta Dias.

“The credit crunch thing that they are talking about now is just an excuse.

“They have been postponing the issue for a long time - it’s been almost two years since they were informed about it.

“I think it is just an excuse, saying that it would cost more money to their overburdened finances.

“Why don’t they think of the money they have made from all these years of putting the lives of these labourers at risk?

“Safety of people is more important than money and it has to be paramount.”

She said the risk to workers had now increased because of increasing numbers of cars on the road.

“The chance of having an accident in an open truck is greater now than it was two years ago,” she claimed.

“Why are they talking about the cost and traffic congestion now?

“They have had enough time, why didn’t they highlight the issue earlier?”

It’s time for Bahrain’s government to put its promises into action by going ahead with the ban. Traffic congestion? Another cost for the private sector? the credit crunch? None of these arguments stand up when you consider number of workers that have been hurt, maimed or even killed because of accidents in open trucks.

The 29-year old mother-of-3 had gone to Kuwait in order to work to support her family in Nepal, while her husband Ang Tenzi Sherpa worked as a cook at an American military base in Iraq.

When Dolma’s husband heard about her death sentence, he returned to Nepal immediately to raise the alarm. A major civil society campaign, spearheaded by the Nepal-Americas Council (an association made up of about 30 different groups organised by Nepalis working in the US and Canada) raised enough money for Dolma’s legal representation and mounted a letter-writing campaign targetting the Kuwaiti government, Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington D.C and Condoleeza Rice.

Yesterday’s ruling is great news and it is impressive to see a trans-national campaign putting pressure on the Kuwaiti authorities and succeeding. It is likely that Dolma will now be extradited to Nepal which does not practice the death penalty.

However, there are still around 30 Nepali maids languishing in Kuwaiti jails, many with children.

Many thanks to my source in Kathmandu for the update…

The Gulf States’ army of remittance workers must run the gauntlet of risky working conditions, corrupt employers and often crippling debt obligations before they can send their hard-earned wages back to their home countries, and have few places to turn to for assistance if they find themselves in trouble. The Gulf is a dangerous place for migrant labourers from all over the developing world, but the situation of Nepali workers is particularly precarious, since Nepal does not maintain embassies in several Gulf countries, leaving workers unable to access diplomatic support in cases of abuse, accidents or pay disputes. Globalisation has brought the Gulf countries a windfall of cheap labour, which governments and corporations alike have been quick to use- and abuse – as they race one another to build up glitzy megacities and infrastructure projects. But Nepal has been slow off the mark in providing its citizens with the support they need as they grapple with the dangers and iniquities of migrant life.

A quick scan of the local press in countries such as Bahrain and the UAE often reveals a litany of fatalities, industrial accidents, and pay disputes involving South Asian construction workers and domestic staff, although these rarely receive any coverage or investigation beyond a mention in the news shorts. The media in the Gulf States prefers to devote column inches to stories of foreign investment and ambitious building projects, keeping the dark underbelly of their economies out of the public eye. But it is precisely this dark side of the Gulf that most Nepalis inhabit when they join the region’s blue-collar workforce.

It comes as a surprise to even the most educated Arabs that Nepal is now such a major supplier of labour to the Gulf. ‘Do Nepalis really need embassies here?’ one incredulous academic and political scientist said to me during a recent trip to Bahrain when rights for migrant workers came up in conversation ‘There must only be about five or six of them it this part of the world, at most. Remember that Nepal is a small country’.

The truth is that well over one and a half million Nepalis work in the Gulf States, where the stereotype of the Nepali as hardworking, loyal and willing to take on the dangerous or dirty jobs that locals shun is alive and well. Despite the risks, a rising number of Nepalis are heading overseas for work; Nearly 220,000 Nepalis migrated for employment in the 2007-8 financial year, compared with 104,736 in 2001-2, the majority leaving for low-skilled jobs in the Gulf and Malaysia. However, the death toll is rising too; over 700 Nepalis labourers died in the Gulf States in 2007, according to reports from Nepali Embassies, including 153 in Qatar, 49 in the UAE and a staggering 301 in Saudi Arabia. Only 49% of the deaths reported in Saudi Arabia were thought to have been due to natural causes, while the rest were attributed to cardiac arrests, industrial accidents and suicides. Heart attacks are now a common phenomenon among Nepali labourers in the Gulf, even the young and healthy, thought to be the result of working on construction sites in blazing temperatures.

For the most part Nepali labourers and domestics leave home with little idea of what to expect in the Gulf, and few places to turn if they run into trouble. Existing embassies in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates provide vital backup to Nepalis, especially to housemaids fleeing abusive employers, but an insufficient number ILO-labour attachés struggle to cope with the volume of the demands for help. In a recent interview, Surya Nath Mishra, Nepali Ambassador to Qatar, revealed that the embassy in Doha receives as many as 100 requests per day for intervention in disputes over pay and conditions.

Under its Foreign Labour Act of 1985 (reviewed in 2007) Nepal is required to provide embassies in all countries where more than 5000 of its citizens work, but it has, for the most part failed to do this, and remittance workers in the Gulf are paying a heavy price. With no embassy of their own in Kuwait and Bahrain, Nepalis have to undertake a costly and time-consuming journey to Saudi Arabia to access diplomatic support, or must put themselves at the mercy of the host country’s legal system. But in many cases, the embassy in Riyadh is just too far away. In October this year 125 Nepalis arriving in Bahrain to work with a security firm were stranded at the airport after their sponsor cancelled their contract, and were held under tight security by Bahraini authorities until the Nepali government eventually stepped in to arrange their transport home.

These workers were among the lucky ones; countless others in find themselves entirely cut off from all channels of support when faced with a crisis. Around 30,000 Nepalis work in Kuwait, and around 30 Nepali housemaids – most with children born out of wedlock – are languishing in jails, unable to contact an embassy to secure legal advice or repatriation. One Nepali woman, 29-year old Dolma Sherpa, is on death row after being accused of murdering her Philippina room-mate while their Kuwaiti employer was away on the Haj pilgrimage last year. The details of the case remain patchy; Dolma allegedly killed the woman after the Nepali was caught meeting her lover in secret. Dolma’s was a rare example of a case which received any international support or media attention. Her husband, Ang Tenzi Sherpa, who was working as a cook in an American military camp in neighbouring Iraq, returned to Nepal immediately after hearing of her sentence, and begged the Nepali government for help. The result was that Nepal’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Hamid Ansari, mounted an international campaign to save Dolma’s life. As of the last update from the campaign, Dolma is still in jail awaiting the verdict of an appeal. Had her husband not been nearby and able to raise the alert, Dolma would have been left at the hands of the Kuwaiti justice system with no legal support, and most likely would have been added to growing number of Nepalis who don’t make it back home from the Gulf.

Since the governments of the Gulf States appear to have washed their hands of any responsibility for the welfare of migrant labourers, the Nepali government needs to radically rethink the level of support it provides for its citizens working in the region. The phrase ‘out of sight, out of mind’ seems to sum up the attitude of host countries towards Nepali workers in the Gulf, where there is a dangerous misperception that they are an insignificant and forgettable minority from a faraway land. Now it falls to Nepal’s government to ensure that it does not replicate this attitude with regards to its own brave remittance men and women in the Gulf.

The global recession and recent drop in oil prices have thown Dubai’s property market – once though strong enough to weather any market shock- into chaos, and major construction companies are now laying off staff and cancelling or postponing projects. No surprise that low-paid migrant labourers are the ones that will suffer the most as a result of the downturn, with pay-cuts of up to 40%, or the prospect of losing their jobs. For those who rely on work in Dubai’s construction sites to send remittance money home to their families and communities in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, lower wages and a shrinking job market will have dire implications.

The FT slideshow gives an insight into the impact of the financial crisis on the lives of the residents of ‘Sonapur’ (which means ‘place of gold’ in Hindi), the area of Dubai where labourers live in prison-like encampments. Human Rights organisations fear that the financial pressure on UAE’s construction sector could undo progress that has been made in recent years to secure rights for migrant workers.

Given the sheer scale of human rights abuses of migrant workers, it is often disappointing to see the lack of coverage that the issue gets in the media. This is why it is particularly encouraging to see Britain’s leading business paper running great piece of photojournalism about the lives of those who will suffer the very worst of the fallout from the global financial crisis.

A theme that is bound to dominate this year is the impact of the global financial crisis on migrant labourers, many of whom will suffer from pay cuts and job losses.

In his speech to mark Migrants’ Day, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon outlined the added vulnerability that migrant workers face as a result of today’s volatile financial climate, and called for an end to the criminalisation of migrants:

The world’s more than 200 million migrants are especially vulnerable to the financial downturn shaking the global economy. The crisis in markets has put them at greater risk of destitution, stigmatization, discrimination and abuse. Reports of layoffs and lower remittances only begin to tell the story of the human suffering that this crisis has wrought.

Moreover, migration policies are growing ever more restrictive. We continue to see the criminalization of irregular migrants. And all too often, migrants are being dealt with primarily from the perspective of security. There is a growing tendency in many parts of the world to subject them to mandatory or prolonged detention, even though human rights law says that detention should be the exception, not the rule.

You can read the whole thing here:

Indian daily The Hindustan Times has a thoughtful comment piece on the UN and Migrant’s Day here. Eight years since the UN declared December 18th as International Migrants’ Day, it has been struggling to obtain ratification for the International Convention on the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Their Families writes Dabiru Sridhar Patnaik. The Convention has failed to gather momentum, and many major labour-receiving countries in the EU have still failed to sign, as well as a number of key exporting states- including India, which sends around 450,000 workers abroad each year.

For a view from the grassroots level, the Radio 1812 project makes for essential listening on Migrants’ Day. Radio 1812 is an initiative of December 18, an advocacy organisation campaigning internationally for the rights of migrant workers, and will bring together radio stations and independent broadcasters from around 25 different countries to share a series of short documentaries and personal experiences of migration.

Finally; a brief mention for activities taking place in the Philippines, one of the world’s largest exporters of labour. The UN may give migrants a day, but the Philippines gives them an entire month December is designated the ‘Month of Overseas Filipinos’ which honours the massive economic and social contribution of Filipinos working abroad. This year, the government will mark Migrants’ Day with a day-long conference, the Second Global Forum on Migration and Development (2GFMD), at which two reports on government and civil society will be presented.

Dr Mansoor Al-Jamri, Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Bahrain’s Alwasat newspaper criticized the governments of Gulf States for exploitation of mainly South Asian construction workers who are forced to live in ‘conditions that cats and dogs would not accept’. Al-Jamri and warned that if labourers continue to be treated like ‘third class citizens’ then international bodies may be forced to intervene in the affairs of the Gulf States.

Sheikh Mohamed Ahmed Jassim Althani, former Qatari Minister for Economy and Commerce, speaking against the debate, said that workers also get abused at home, and that Gulf States should be praised for their ambitious and comprehensive social service and education systems.

“But remember they also get abused at home. I do not defend these employers, but the state is taking all kinds of measures to enforce the regulations.”

The motion received an impassioned response from audience members, such as one young Egyptian man who had visited labour camps, argued that migrant workers were forced to live in conditions even worse than those seen in some Palestinian refugee camps.

The debate was picked up and commented on by several regional publications, including Qatari Daily Gulf Times, which ran an editorial on migrant labour in its 30th anniversary edition (’Labour Law Violators Need to be Pursued’):

At a time when Gulf Times is taking a trip down memory lane it is worth delving farther into history to the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the 19th century for another sense of perspective. In 1833 and 1844 the first laws prohibiting children younger than nine from working were passed but it was not until well into the 20th century that no-nonsense enforcement eradicated the problem.
So as we continue to wait for changes to the sponsorship law in Qatar employers who violate the existing labour legislation need to be pursued through the courts more rigorously and punished accordingly. After all, three quarters of the Doha Debates audience who believe Gulf Arabs value profit over people cannot be wrong, can they?

In Lebanon, between 150,000 to 300,000 women work as migrant domestic workers, with approximately 100,000 having legal status in the country. In August 2008, Human Rights Watch released a report covering the period of January 1, 2007 to August 15, 2008 revealing migrant domestic workers had extremely high death tolls due to unnatural causes.

Migrant domestic workers experience harsh working conditions and consistent workplace abuse, and currently many migrant domestic workers can be found sleeping under cars or on the ground surrounding their respective countries’ embassies in Lebanon, searching for assistance for their situations. Nadim Houry is the senior researcher at Human Rights Watch covering Lebanon and Lillian Boctor from Tadamon spoke with Houry about the situation.

Read the full interview here.

A former Malaysian flight attendant who repeatedly scalded her Indonesian maid has been jailed by a court in the capital Kuala Lumpur for 18 years.

The court convicted Yim Pek Ha, 40, of three attacks on Nirmala Bonat using boiling water and a hot iron.

Ms Bonat, who was 19 at the time, testified that she had been beaten and burnt for making mistakes.

The case provoked national outrage in Malaysia after newspapers published pictures of her injuries.

It brought attention to the situation of Indonesian migrant domestic workers.

The mother-of-four’s defence team, which pleaded unsuccessfully that the injuries were self-inflicted, plans to appeal against the sentence.

Eka Suripto, an Indonesian diplomat in Kuala Lumpur, welcomed the verdict “as a deterrent to future cases”.

‘Sadistic behaviour’

Judge Akhtar Tahir found Yim guilty of using dangerous weapons to inflict injury on Nirmala Bonat at her Kuala Lumpur home on three separate occasions.

Saying that he wanted to impose a “deterrent sentence” to show that “sadistic behaviour… cannot be tolerated in a civil society”, he ordered her to start serving the sentence immediately.

In her testimony, Ms Bonat said that on one occasion Yim had taken a hot iron and pressed it against her breasts after complaining that clothes had not been properly ironed.

The maltreatment came to light after a security guard at the condominium where she lived found her crying and saw injuries to her face.

She has since returned to her family home in Indonesia.

In court on Thursday, Yim reportedly sobbed uncontrollably and hugged her family after the judge read his verdict.

Tens of thousands of foreigners are believed to work in Malaysia as domestic servants, many of them from Indonesia, and revelations about abuses have strained relations between the two countries.

At the time of the assaults on Ms Bonat, the country was the second largest destination for Indonesian maids after Saudi Arabia.

BBC

Countries in the Middle East have yet to enforce harsher penalties and tougher legislation to protect domestic workers from abusive employers. We hope that this will come to an end soon.

Below are the results of the interview!

When was Full Stop Advertising founded, and what is its mission?
Full Stop was founded in 2002. Our mission is to develop advertising with a STOPping power. I.e. Advertising that attracts the attention, engaging and delivers results. And we have a special passion in developing advertising for the soul. Or what I like to call good deed advertising which is part of our SCR (Social Corporate Responsibilities) to our societies.

How many ad campaigns did you create in the past that deal with religion or social issues? What message do you hope to send through such creations?
We did a lot! We had several video clips that aired in Music channels (Lasaf a3ood ya Ommi, Watanak eish tegdar te3teeh, Malak ghair Allah & recently the wedding). We also did several PSAs (Public Service Announcments) e.g. Ghiba, Orphans (Aytam), Negdar nibdi3/Lazim nit7arak with UN and recently Ra7ma. We hope to develop campaigns that improves our society and makes us better people, by hgihlighting issues in our communities that need to be addressed.

Can you tell us a bit about the “Rahma” campaign? What do you hope to achieve through it, and why did you create it in the first place?
Ra7ma campaign is just like other campaigns that we work on. We see there is an issue that needs to be addressed, especially in this case the abuse of the weaker people (maids, drivers, labor…etc.) and they usually can’t speak and got no one to turn to. So we thought this is something that need to be brought into attention. We hope that this issue is highlighted and we open people’s eyes on the proper way our Islam teaches us to deal with these people (with Mercy not abuse)!

It seems to be that this is the first time in the history of Arab media that a prominent and visible campaign is launched on behalf of migrant workers and their mistreatment within the region. Do you feel that the feedback was negative or positive?
Feed back was mostly positive. I’m convinced of what we did. But not the less, there are those sceptical people that only see the glass half empty and critisize every thing and every one.

Abroad, many people claim that migrant workers undergo discrimination here because women or ethnic minorities generally are “oppressed” under Islam, but we as Muslims of course don’t consider this to be true. In fact, it seems that Islam inspired this campaign, judging by its closing statement: “No mercy upon the merciless.” Did Islam indeed inspire this campaign and if so, how?
I believe that there isn’t something called Islamic and no Islamic. Islam is a way of life and it inspires every thing in our lives especially Manners (al25lag) and there are a lot of a7adeeth on 7osn al5olo8, altawado3 and alra7ma [prophetic sayings on good character, humility and compassion]. So yes it inspired us to do it but not just because it is in Islam rather because Islam is about this

What can we as young Muslims do in the Arab world to promote this message of the campaign?
I think if they can take this message and spread it, we are now working on developing questionares (sort of a self test) on how well do we treat these workers and the result should be compared to how Alrasool PBUH [our Prophet] treated his servent. It would be good if they help distribute it. Also they can help in spreading a7adeeth alra7ma and alta3amol ma3 aldo3afaa [Prophetic sayings on compassion and dealing with those who are weak].

Arab News recently published an article outlining the significance of this campaign, stating that the campaign has 3 phases, so is there a lot to expect from this campaign in the near future?
Yes inshaa Allah. An issue like this will not be fixed with just one campaign.

How long will these ads run on Arab television? Are they only aired on MBC or are there other stations as well? Is there a print version?
These ads will run for some time inshaa allah. Now they are on MBC, Rotana will air it soon. Iqraa is also airing it now. Yes there are press ads:

In Full Stop Advertising, as a company, do you plan on continuing to focus on social issues?
Yes inshaa Allah, this is part of our mission statement and reason for being.

We would like to thank Kaswara and the rest of the team at Full Stop Advertising for this wonderful campaign, and also for being so approachable and and willing to be interviewed for the site.

For those of you who want to see all FullStop Ads, please visit their official YouTube channel.

JEDDAH: The abuse of workers in the Kingdom, as reported by several human rights groups, has prompted a Saudi advertisement agency boss to launch a series of TV advertisements to encourage people to show mercy.

“We wanted to give people something to think and talk about. Workers are fragile people, and in Islam we must treat them with mercy and compassion,” said Kaswara Al-Khatib, managing director of Full Stop Advertising, which is behind the initiative.

The campaign, entitled Rahma, is part of Full Stop Advertising’s corporate social responsibility drive. Organizers of the campaign hope to modify public attitudes by encouraging people to treat workers humanely.

“The Rahma campaign is an initiative to publicly address the abuse of domestic and migrant workers in Saudi society,” said Al-Khatib. “We sometimes forget that those who we deal with as helpers are actually human beings. We are obliged to treat them well. Why ask them to do things that we can’t bear ourselves? If we have mercy on them, then Allah will have mercy on us,” he added.

As part of the campaign, TV advertisements are being broadcast on channels run by the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) and printed advertisements are being published in local newspapers. Al-Khatib told Arab News that the advertisements are part of the first phase of the campaign’s three phases.

“We want to deliver a message to people that they should not abuse. We also want to show them how to help workers and help improve people’s attitude toward them,” he added.

The advertisements have left an impressionable effect on people in the Kingdom and have been the topic of discussion for bloggers. Glitter who blogs on www.glitterpowder.blogspot. com, wrote asking friends if they had seen the advertisements.

“Oh My God! I was so touched; I had to swallow a big lump that was rising in my throat! Ok I admit, I’m a bit sensitive, but these advertisements are just masterpieces… We need these positive, powerful little messages that speak to people’s hearts and consciences,” wrote Glitter in her blog.

Mahmoud Saeed, a 31-yearold reporter, said the advertisements are a very brave step in admitting that the problem exists in the Kingdom. “This is the first step toward finding a solution. It’s very true that we have people who perform acts of worship to Allah yet have no mercy and don’t fear God when it comes to treating others,” he said. The theme of the campaign was derived from a Hadith in which the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “The merciful are shown mercy by the All- Merciful. Have mercy on those on earth, and the Lord of the Heavens will have mercy on you.”

To widen the scope of public awareness, Al-Khatib said Full Stop Advertising recently signed a contract with the National Society for Human Rights to work on another campaign to tackle child abuse. “There are many brilliant ideas and lots of public service initiatives to inform and educate the public about. There are many issues — may it be regarding the Qur’an, the hazards of smoking, the importance of reading … We’d like people or organizations interested in contributing to the betterment of society to contact us to sponsor these initiatives,” said Al-Khatib.

Human Rights Watch issued a report in July 2008, entitled “As If I Am Not Human,” about the abuse of Asian domestic workers in the Kingdom.

The report stated that while many domestic workers enjoy decent work conditions, others endure a range of abuses, including nonpayment of salaries, forced confinement, food deprivation, excessive workload, and instances of severe psychological, physical and sexual abuse. Human Rights Watch documented dozens of cases where the combination of these conditions amounted to forced labor, trafficking, or slavery- like conditions.

The rights body also published a report in July 2004, entitled “Bad Dreams: Exploitation and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Saudi Arabia,” detailing the stories of migrant workers in the Kingdom who were exploited to slave-like level. The report said the workers’ lives were further complicated by deeply rooted gender, religious and racial discrimination.