The UAE is the home to Dubai, the ultimate tourist destination not just of Middle East, but the whole world. It is the 4th most visited city in the world and every year amasses millions of visitors. Its popularity is no surprise with the world’s tallest tower, world’s largest mall, and world’s only seven-star hotel all being situated there.
The construction industry in Dubai is booming, with new skyscrapers being cast every day. However, this boom in jobs has come with sickening stipulations. Migrants from some of the poorest countries like Nepal, India, Pakistan, flock to Dubai in hopes for a better life.
They come, like most immigrants, to support their family and lessen their suffering. However, to their dismay they are subject to a manacling political system, horrendous living conditions, and frightful working sites.
In the UAE, along with many other Middle Eastern countries, there is a legal sponsorship system in place known as Kafala. Kafala is a sponsorship system that gives the sponsor (who is usually the employer) direct, legal control on the migrant’s rights. The system is based upon the rule that without the sponsor’s permission the worker can not leave the country or change jobs. If one does so, their residence visa can get canceled, which makes them illegal. This system provides the migrants themselves no autonomy. They are given few individual rights and live in the constant fear that any infraction could cause them to become an illegal immigrant. Though the UAE does not allow the confiscation of passports, it is a practice that is loosely enforced and widely used. The confiscation of passports is one of the most crippling actions taken by corporations. It essentially gives the employer all power since the passport is the only way the migrant has some sort of identity, and a means to return home.
The injustices do not end here. Migrant laborers work twelve-hour shifts that pay eight dollars for the whole day. That is, on average, 0.67 cents per hour. Often times, wages are withheld, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months.
For almost no pay, migrants partake in back-breaking construction in 100 degree, 110 degree, sometimes even 120 degree weather.
Though UAE law calls for a break during the hottest hours of the day, many companies do not abide by it. As a result, in the summer when the temperature rises up to 120 degrees, thousands of workers face severe dehydration and heat stroke.
For most of the world, home is a place of solace and comfort; a place one can look forward to after a long day of work. But alas, even the labor camps that these workers live in are atrocious. The Human Rights Watch interviewed 36 laborers living in camps that were provided by their employers. Overflowing toilets, no electricity, 10 men living in one room, unclean kitchens; these are just a few of the deplorable characteristics. These camps are a breeding ground for disease and show a direct disrespect of the workers.
Dubai’s tourist attractions are the playground for the elite. But these elites for some reason, refuse to look down. They refuse to look down from their 10-story penthouses and see these ants- no humans carrying heavy pipes on their bare, sunburnt backs, while they themselves enjoy the pleasure of air conditioning and sunblock. These ants trudge across the sandy, dusty floor building these towers that the world enjoys.
Ants are known to carry 5,000 times more than their body weight, but have they ever carried the economic burdens of their family, the human right violations of this world, and the injustices that these ants in Dubai have to?
A quick ride down from the elevator, the privileged realize that these ants are not ants at all, but humans. They are the migrant construction workers of Dubai that have made the country as glamorous as it is today but have received none of the glory.
