lol got approved 13 mins ago, anyway this was on yesterday but you still watch it on bbc iplayer
Just say the word Dubai and the images appear: impossible glass structures glistening in the year-round sun, perfect man-made beaches, yachts, private helicopters, malls and spreads of food that would satisfy Roman emperors - all the things huge amounts of new money can buy.
And yet for me these images are the opposite of what should come to mind.
Ben Anderson spent three months in Dubai with migrant workers
Having spent the last three months travelling there, I no longer think of the seven star Burj Al Arab hotel when I think of Dubai, but of emaciated, wretched men, lining up for buses before the sun has risen, resigned to the fact that their hard day's work wouldn't earn them enough to buy a round of coffee here. The branding of Dubai has to be one of the greatest PR triumphs of the past 20 years.
It works out incredibly well for the developers - they can charge first world fortunes for the dream villas and apartments, but pay third world salaries to the men actually building them.
Poor and illiterate
Many in Dubai say that this is just globalisation working, and that while the lives of the workers, and the salaries they are paid, look bad to us, to them, where they come from, it's good.
This excuse doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
The story of Dubai's immigrant construction workers shocks and depresses in several different stages. The poor and often illiterate men, who come here in their millions from the Indian sub-continent, are getting exploited from so many different angles that it's sometimes hard to know who to be angry at.
It all starts in their home countries - often India or Bangladesh, where local recruitment agents promise them high salaries and generous overtime payments.
In Pictures: Slumdog workers
But often they also charge a "visa" or "transit" fee, averaging 200,000 taka, or £2,000 ($2,980).
This is supposed to be illegal.
The workers pay the fee because they believe the figures they've been promised. In most cases, it will take them the entire two-to-three year contract for them just to pay back that fee and break even.
It often takes that long because many developers, or their sub-contactors pay shockingly low wages - often less than £120 ($178.83) a month, for, on average, a 10-hour a day, six-day working week.
Rivers of stinking waste
We followed dozens of workers back to their "labour camps" where they cooked rice and potatoes (they can only afford meat or fish two-to-three times a month) in filthy rooms equipped with the most basic gas hobs.
In one camp sewage had leaked out from toilet blocks, and there was so much of it that the workers had built an entire network of stepping-stones just to get to their accommodation blocks.
"The dream," as one Indian recruitment agent told me "soon turns into a nightmare the moment they arrive."
Upon arrival, they are then bussed to their labour camp, where they will share a room with at least six other workers for the duration of their time in Dubai.
Jamie Oliver was an ambassador for Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai
If they are given contracts, they are often not worth the paper they are written on, and collective bargaining and trade unions are illegal in Dubai anyway.
The developments we investigated are both enthusiastically endorsed by a long line of celebrities, who allow themselves to be described as "ambassadors."
England footballer Michael Owen, cricketer Freddie Flintoff and golfer Sam Torrance endorse developments by the First Group in Dubai's Sports City.
British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, golfers Greg Norman, Vijay Singh, and Sergio Garcia are all ambassadors for Jumeirah Golf Estates, which will be home to the $20M "Race to Dubai," the richest tournament in the golfing world.
The master developer of Jumeirah Golf Estates is a company called Leisurecorp, which owns Turnberry and has a stake in Troon.
'Like a prison sentence'
We looked hard for a single example of good practice on two different developments, interviewing dozens of workers employed by many different companies - some British, some owned by the Dubai government.
But I didn't find a single exception, not one worker who hadn't paid a visa fee, not one who was being well paid (the highest monthly salary I heard of was being paid to a skilled crane operator- approximately £220 ($327) a month), not one who could eat well or was free to go home if he chose to.
They all said they were much worse off than they had been back at home.
"We are doing slavery," said one worker, "we feel we are in jail, it's like a prison sentence. This is how I feel. I am helpless. What can I do?"
Nick McGeehan, who runs Mafiswasta, one of the few NGOs working on behalf of the immigrant construction workers, is not surprised. I asked him what role we were playing in this, as property buyers, or as one of the million plus British tourists that visited Dubai last year.
"You're contributing, directly or indirectly, to the enslavement of a migrant workforce. That's a difficult pill to swallow, but when you look at the evidence that's a fact."
And what about the celebrities who endorse these developments, some of whom told us they sought, and got, re-assurances that the workers were being treated well.
"It's not enough to say that. At best that's naive and at worst that's negligent."
Panorama: Slumdogs and Millionaires is on BBC One, Monday 6 April at 8.30pm.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/fr...00/7981320.stm[/B]
Its absolutely disgusting how they're building their economy, I've spoken to some taxi drivers in Dubai and they've had to share rooms with up to seven people. I felt so sorry for this one lad who came from northern pakistan, he was hoping to earn enough money to send some back home, but was barely managing a living himself.
Try and watch this tonight
lol got approved 13 mins ago, anyway this was on yesterday but you still watch it on bbc iplayer
salam
May Allah(swt) bless you for bringing this appalling slavery and crime against humanity which is happening right now in Dubai to Light.
I will never go there for any reason, because I refuse to let my money be fuel in the engine of disbelief and opression which is dubai.
- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...i-1664368.htmlSahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. "To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell," he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in Sahinal's village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they would be given great accommodation, great food, and treated well. All they had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work visa – a fee they'd pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold his family land, and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this paradise.
As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat – where western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in summer, when it hits 55 degrees – for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don't like it, the company told him, go home. "But how can I go home? You have my passport, and I have no money for the ticket," he said. "Well, then you'd better get to work," they replied.
Sahinal was in a panic. His family back home – his son, daughter, wife and parents – were waiting for money, excited that their boy had finally made it. But he was going to have to work for more than two years just to pay for the cost of getting here – and all to earn less than he did in Bangladesh.
He shows me his room. It is a tiny, poky, concrete cell with triple-decker bunk-beds, where he lives with 11 other men. All his belongings are piled onto his bunk: three shirts, a spare pair of trousers, and a cellphone. The room stinks, because the lavatories in the corner of the camp – holes in the ground – are backed up with excrement and clouds of black flies. There is no air conditioning or fans, so the heat is "unbearable. You cannot sleep. All you do is sweat and scratch all night." At the height of summer, people sleep on the floor, on the roof, anywhere where they can pray for a moment of breeze.
The water delivered to the camp in huge white containers isn't properly desalinated: it tastes of salt. "It makes us sick, but we have nothing else to drink," he says.
The work is "the worst in the world," he says. "You have to carry 50kg bricks and blocks of cement in the worst heat imaginable ... This heat – it is like nothing else. You sweat so much you can't pee, not for days or weeks. It's like all the liquid comes out through your skin and you stink. You become dizzy and sick but you aren't allowed to stop, except for an hour in the afternoon. You know if you drop anything or slip, you could die. If you take time off sick, your wages are docked, and you are trapped here even longer."
He is currently working on the 67th floor of a shiny new tower, where he builds upwards, into the sky, into the heat. He doesn't know its name. In his four years here, he has never seen the Dubai of tourist-fame, except as he constructs it floor-by-floor.
Is he angry? He is quiet for a long time. "Here, nobody shows their anger. You can't. You get put in jail for a long time, then deported." Last year, some workers went on strike after they were not given their wages for four months. The Dubai police surrounded their camps with razor-wire and water-cannons and blasted them out and back to work.
The "ringleaders" were imprisoned. I try a different question: does Sohinal regret coming? All the men look down, awkwardly. "How can we think about that? We are trapped. If we start to think about regrets..." He lets the sentence trail off. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence by adding: "I miss my country, my family and my land. We can grow food in Bangladesh. Here, nothing grows. Just oil and buildings."
SALAM
heres the link to it on iplayer, only for UK viewers
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode..._Millionaires/
some of the conditions are disgusting so watch out
subhanallah bro, thanks for that link you only quoted part of it, its opened my eyes to whats happening in dubaiformat_quote Originally Posted by salamfromrom
thanks bro aadil i have a look at it now
Hide
Looks like you're enjoying the discussion, but you're not signed up for an account.
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks