March 25, 2004

Pakistani workers are living the “Dubai Dream” on velvety carpets and 24-hour air-conditioning, bringing home bags full of goodies. Dubai looks like a vast desert building site interspersed with magnificent high-rises and luxurious grasslands. The situation is win-win all around. Or is it? Najia Alavi reports

As deceptive as appearances can be, the glitz of Dubai may not be all that it seems. Pakistan’s increasing dependence on remittances may or may not be that great a thing. The “Dubai Dream” is just that — a fantasy, a dream that closes its eyes on the gruelling 12-hour work day outdoors in the sweltering nine-month-summer heat. With construction continuing round the clock every day, the building site is all too quickly transforming into opulence, but vacant towers prompt analysts to declare that the bust in the booming construction industry may be just around the corner.

Rough estimates (there are no official figures) put the number of Pakistanis working in the emirates at about half a million of which 70 per cent are helpers, masons, carpenters, electricians, and drivers in the construction industry.

Dubai is a city in a hurry to be glorious, to be the best in everything — the tallest tower, the largest cake, the biggest shopping mall –— the list is endless. But while Dubai’s better-off expatriates laud the “development” that allows them to live well-paid, tax-free lives, those who have been building the city brick by brick live gloomy lives far away from their families on meagre salaries.

Tucked away at the edge of the desert away from glaring city lights, are labour camps — housing facilities built by contractors for their workers. As I take a turn into the road that leads up to what I expect to be a colony of shanties, I am pleasantly surprised to see thousands of apartment blocks with the backs of window ACs jutting out of them. It could just as well have been apartments in Karachi’s Gulshan-i-Iqbal. However, driving deeper into the colony I discover that this is yet another facade, for hiding in its depths are thousands of despondent, gloomy faces, resigned to their fates.

Afraid that I might be kicked out of every labour camp and worried that no one will speak to me, I am again surprised to find a genuine openness, warmth, and hospitality that is really practised here. And it has nothing to do with the novelty of a woman walking into an exclusively male locale, but the rarity of anyone being interested in their lives.

Over five days of speaking to small groups of workers — some employed with big companies and others with small ones — I learn to respect those who I had often seen working away in half-completed buildings but never really noticed.

Sitting in whitewashed stark plain rooms with six to10 bunk beds, I hear stories of burnt boats, lost dreams and vanquished hopes. Paying about 1.5 lakh rupees to agents, they come to Dubai to earn that little extra to send back home for the son’s books, the sister’s wedding and for the ever impossible dream of having their own small pucca house.

Their day begins at 4:00 in the morning when they wake up to cook their breakfast and lunch, and board their company buses at 5:00. They are at their respective sites by 6:00 and toil away till lunchtime when they get an hour-long break, and then it’s back to work till 6:00 in the evening.

Depending on the work, the foreman and the urgency of the project (in Dubai almost all real estate projects are urgent and construction goes on 24-hours), they may have to stay on for another few hours till the next shift is brought in. The workers have no say in the choice of site, or the hours they work. They get overtime for the extra hours and money is assumed to compensate for this kind of slavery.

And perhaps it does. Money is by far the only motivator that keeps them going. On average a worker earns anywhere between Dhs450 - 600 a month, usually inclusive of a Dhs150 allowance for food. Overtime may take that figure up to about Dhs800. That is about Rs12,000, considerably more than what they would earn back home. But I still ask question whether it is worth it, and whether their quality of life is better than what it was in Pakistan.

Most say their personal quality of life is much worse, but they are happy that they are able to provide for those back home. I point to the stark clean room, the air-conditioning, the fridge, and the TV in their room. They point to the nine other people they share the room, the air-conditioning, the fridge and TV with.

They tell me that the air-conditioners, the fridge and the TV were bought by pooling their own money and were not, as I assumed, provided by the company. I remember my first impression of the apartment blocks with their window A/Cs and realize how appearances can indeed be deceptive.

Living in hostel-like rooms outside city limits with no entertainment and no families (the minimum wage for being able to sponsor families is Dhs4,000), life can be dull at best. Hidden away from the city of lights, and practically stranded — for the closest bazaar, cinema or eat-out means transportation costs out of their own pockets — these workers are in every sense of the word deprived of any recreation or amusement.

But the lack of amusement is the least of their worries. Workers from bigger well-established companies complain about work hours and meagre salaries. Workers from smaller ones rue about not getting paid for long periods of time. I ask how they survive. “On credit from the supermarkets...by borrowing from friends,” they reply. Naively I ask why they put up with it, why not complain? They smile and gently explain that registering a complaint gives a pretext for employers to “cancel”.

New terminology: cancelled. I go to a library and find a copy of the labour laws. Labour relations in the UAE are meant to be regulated by Federal Laws No. 8 of 1980 and No. 24 of 1981 and the various amendments to it. Official accounts describe it as a “progressive and balanced law” providing benefits to both workers and employers.

But, because it is not a centuries old tried and tested law, it is a law that is in a flux, changing so often that even officials and company lawyers find it challenging to keep up with it. This part of the world’s lack of enthusiasm for spreading information quickly does not help.

Nevertheless, I discover that it is the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs that is meant to enforce the law. And by “cancelled” they mean a cancellation of their visas by their sponsors — the company they work for — and an automatic six-month ban on their entry into the UAE.

On the issue of non-payment of salaries, the law is clear that “a worker may quit work without notice if the employer fails to comply with any of his contractual obligations towards him.” These obligations obviously include the payment of salaries on time.

However, there is a catch in the law. In such a situation, the worker can quit and “demand” to have his visa cancelled. But, he cannot have his sponsorship transferred to another employer willing to offer him work because that would require “permission” from his non-paying original employer who is more often than not hardly that charitable.

Hence, in layman’s terms, “cancel” would mean flushing the 1.5 lakh rupees — the fee the workers usually pay to their agents to bring them to Dubai — right down the drain. It means going back ashen-faced to a life of irregular work and erratic earnings in Pakistan, where workers are hired on a daily basis and on average manage to get work only for 15 days of a month.

I say to the group that has not been paid for the last eight months that some earnings are better than no earnings, so why not let the company cancel their visa so they can go back? They say hope beyond hope is better than taking what awaits them in Pakistan.

Besides, they have loans to pay off should they return. So they toil away at their sometimes 12-hour shifts, and hope that one day the contractor will land a big project, and will eventually pay them their accumulated dues. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

In the five days that I spend talking to workers, whenever I brought up workers’ rights enshrined in the Labour Law, I am thrown back the “cancel” term. I realize that “cancel” is like a sword hanging over their heads; intimidated by the threat of it, workers are afraid to demand unpaid wages, protest poor working and living conditions, or seek legal recourse for any kind of abuse.

It begins to feel like I am peeling an onion layer by layer and discovering that each successive layer is more rotten than the one before. I hear of accidents on construction sites, arms, legs and lives being lost. I hear the story of three labourers who were sleeping under a tree during their lunch break. A water tanker backed into them sending them to their home countries in body bags.

I hear of lives lost in the labour camp because of speeding cars that cannot see pedestrians because the lack of streetlights means that the small roads in and around the area are shrouded in darkness.

Then there are those who were brought into the country on visit visas by unscrupulous agents promising them unrealistically high salaries, accommodation, medical facilities — the “Dubai Dream”.

When they got here there were no jobs waiting for them and they were forced to stay on illegally and to seek jobs elsewhere, accepting wages far below even the low-industry norm. Complaints can of course be lodged at the Labour Ministry, but again the sword of cancellation hangs close by, and the workers choose not to protest for fear of reprisals or deportation.

I wonder aloud to a group of workers why the Pakistani embassy/consulate is unable to advocate and negotiate rights for its workers. Most workers reply that, if not outright condescending, most officials are indifferent to their plight. What’s more, they point to how difficult the procedures are for even routine services like passport renewals and attestations at the embassy/consulate.

Perhaps it is about time that the embassy/consulate assumed a more proactive role in serving the needs of this chunk of its citizens living in the UAE, simplifying routine procedures, resolving long-standing worker issues, and advocating their rights.

In fact, it is about time that along with other embassies of labour-sending countries, the UAE government is urged to transform their laws into ones that conform to international laws on worker relations. A minimum wage, acceptable conditions of work, the right to organize and bargain collectively are just some of the rights that must be negotiated and enforced by the new laws. The local media too should look into the issue and create an awareness of it.

Perhaps it is also time for those in Pakistan who are dreaming the “Dubai Dream” to open their eyes and see the reality before deciding to live it. For certainly, though Dubai’s towers are soaring, the builders of the city are surely not in a win-win situation.