The Never Ending Race to Build High

Dubai is a city that has been built by Slaves. Modern day slavery is alive and well in Dubai.

More than 88.5% of UAE residents are foreign workers, with South Asian migrants constituting 42.5% of the UAE’s workforce.

These migrants, usually illiterate and from impoverished, rural communities in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, reply to advertisements offering them $300 a month, food and accommodation in return for manual labour, 9-5, five days a week.

Eager to move to Dubai and begin earning money that they can send home to their families, they take out loans of up to $3000 from unscrupulous recruitment agencies to pay the exorbitant ‘visa fees’ (which is actually illegal – the recruitment agencies are supposed to cover these fees) and board flights to Dubai, excited for a new life in the glitzy Emirate.

When they touch down in Dubai, however, it’s a different story. Driven to squalid shanty towns on the outskirts of Dubai, where 45 men share one outdoor bathroom and 10 or more people sleep in a room, their passports are confiscated and they are told that they will actually be working 14 hour days, 6 or 7 days a week, in the desert sun.

You see, treatment of migrant workers in Dubai gets worse. Much worse. Not only do they have to live in dreadful conditions, but the agreed-upon wages are almost never honoured. With the average construction worker receiving just $175 a month (compared to the per capita income of $2106 a month), and wages often being withheld for months on end to ensure the worker doesn’t ‘quit,’ the migrant worker quickly realises that it will be years before he can even pay off his mounting debts to the recruiters, never mind begin sending money home.

This bonded labour, combined with living conditions described by the Human Rights Watch as being ‘less than humane,’ equates to a situation that can only be described as modern slavery in Dubai. Without money or passports, these foreign workers have no way of returning home to their families and are forced to continue working in dangerous conditions, often without proper safety equipment, in the 50 degree Celsius heat (122 degrees Fahrenheit).

So then, if a holiday to Dubai involves staying in a hotel that is built by and staffed by slaves, why would anyone go?

If this is the case, then a possible solution to this horrific practice would be to simply boycott Dubai and spread the word about the human rights abuses going on there to everyone you know. Thank you.