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Unpaid Workers Are Still Fighting For Their Rights In The UAE

An Indian laborer, Kumar, left, helps his room- mate, Shree Bhagwan, right, to pack his bag at the Al Sajaa camp in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, Saturday Sept. 4, 2010. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/KAMRAN JEBREILI
An Indian laborer, Kumar, left, helps his room- mate, Shree Bhagwan, right, to pack his bag at the Al Sajaa camp in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, Saturday Sept. 4, 2010. CREDIT: AP PHOTO/KAMRAN JEBREILI

Workers from the subcontinent plying their trade in the Persian Gulf are often fed promises of monetary gain. Those dreams of wealth quickly evaporate though, as the harsh reality of poor pay and poorer rights comes to light. One of the most extreme cases is currently taking place in the United Arab Emirates, where unpaid Indian laborers are going on 10 months without pay.

“As many as 25 workers, mostly Indians, with Legend Project Contracting LLC haven’t been paid for more than 10 months and are struggling to survive,” the Khaleej Times reported Wednesday. One worker died of a heart attack last month. The company didn’t pay for his repatriation and didn’t pay his pending dues either.

The company said it hasn’t had any work for the laborers. Despite that, it hasn’t allowed them to leave the country.

“ We had stayed hungry for days and when we feel that we may die, we beg others for some rice, which all of us share,” Brijeesh Tiwari, one of the workers, told the Khaleej Times. “We don’t have our resident card, health insurance card, our visas have expired, no passport, no job and no money.”

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He added that they are falling on very hard times but will not give up their fight. “Once in a while some of us do odd jobs and get Dh10–50 ($2–14). Once we have enough to survive a week, we stay put in the camp. We have to stay alive to fight court cases and the company.”

This isn’t the first report of abuse of migrant workers in the UAE.

Recent years have seen large-scale development in the Persian Gulf, thanks in part to the oil boom of the 1970s. But Persian Gulf countries often have small populations unwilling to work as laborers for low pay and in the brutal desert heat. Workers from countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India have built large parts of Persian Gulf mega-cities, including cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Jeddah, Doha, and more. Their passports are often stripped on arrival, and the workers have no unions are other avenues to demand their rights. Because their countries’ economies rely so heavily on the income from foreign work, workers find little respite or support from their respective embassies.

Academic Fred Halliday wrote about the exploitation of foreign workers following the mass labor migration into the Persian Gulf states nearly 40 years ago:

There is the reluctance or outright refusal of the labor-exporting states to manage the process in such a way as to draw benefit from the migratory flow; with the partial exception of Algeria and South Yemen, the states exporting labor have allowed market forces to prevail or have used migration as a means of acquiring the capital with which to sustain otherwise unviable economic systems.

Exploitation of foreign domestic workers in the Persian Gulf gained international attention after reports came out denouncing Qatar for allowing the deaths of 1,200 migrant workers who were working on building stadiums for the 2022 World Cup. Qatar denied that the death toll was that high, but reports of terrible conditions in Qatari labor camps — that house people mainly from the subcontinent and east and west Africa — continue to pop up in the media. In the UAE, a New York Times investigation into the harsh working conditions at the New York University Abu Dhabi campus in 2014 earned the university serious criticism.