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Bonded Labor

Tragedy behind the glitz and glamor in Dubai.

By: Karthik :+: Under: Bonded Labor, Crime, Immigration, Slavery
On: ⋅ August 9, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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Construction work in progress at Dubai.
Image from Paul Keller.

The west might look at Dubai as an escape from the mundane, much like Las Vegas. On a recent trip to Germany I was amazed at the amount of advertising on TV and print for vacations and destinations in the tiny Gulf nation.

As an Indian, I have been aware of skilled laborers seeking a better future there. The movie Syriana had an entire sub plot of an Indian Pakistani father and son who were working at an oil refinery.

Sree over at SAJA had an interesting observation on his post.

From the moment we taxied into the gate (and the guy guiding us in was a desi), to the airline transfer desk officer to the duty-free clerks to the cleaners throughout the airport, we kept seeing desi after desi after desi. And, of course, lots of the travelers themselves were South Asian. Looked to me as if very few native Dubai-wallahs were actually doing much of the work, especially the menial work.

The NYT confirmed Sree’s observation in its article

Many rich countries, including the United States, rely on cheap foreign workers. But no country is as dependent as the United Arab Emirates, where foreigners make up about 85 percent of the population and 99 percent of the private work force. From bankers to barbers, there are 4.5 million foreigners here, compared with 800,000 Emirati citizens, according to the Ministry of Labor. About two-thirds of the foreigners are South Asians, including most of the 1.2 million construction workers.

Last week Aaina Malek, a 19 year old dancer / model from Karachi, Pakistan succumbed to a fire in her apartment. Normally a news article like this would pass under the radar, but the shocking relvalation was that she died because she could not get out of her apartment. She was locked up in the apartment, so she would not leave.

As the news of Aaina’s death broke, the authorities figured that a lot of dancers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal were living under similar conditions.

Even after a stern warning from the authorities, reports that their plight has not changed are surfacing.

An owner of a dance club in Bur Dubai said the girls are taken to a flat or a villa after they finish their performances at 3am. “Although, now senior staff members living with them have keys of flat, they are kept locked and not allowed to go out,” he said.

A post on travel in the NYT, when read with the above information in mind, creates an entirely different perspective on the things happening in Dubai.

Here is a video of one such dancer in Dubai found on youtube (I cannot confirm the authenticity of this).

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