How Dubai's Skyscrapers Are Built Upon Workers' Blood

A photo of villas in the Dubai neighborhood of Nad Al Sheba has gone viral, as many claim that it has been photoshopped.

The image shows one round-about, as well as row-upon-row of villas. While many on social network Reddit have claimed that the image has indeed been edited to make it look bigger than it actually is, satellite images of the area prove that it really is there.

The Nad Al Sheba Villas area was put together by UAE-based developer Nakheel. The neighborhood features more than 1,572 Mediterranean and Moroccan style four and five bedroom villas and are located just off Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road.

The community features a five kilometer cycling and jogging track, as well as a community clubhouse, restaurant, pool, gym and sports center.

Nad Al Sheba Mall—with another 200 shops—is currently under construction on the edge of the community.

 

Workers’ Conditions

In 2011, Indian laborer Athiraman Kannan kept to his routine in the hours before he jumped off the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa.

Kannan’s leap off the Burj Khalifa was the 26th known suicide by an Indian worker in the country in 2011. In 2010, 113 Indians committed suicide, roughly one every three days.

The deaths have focused fresh attention to the plight of migrant workers in the UAE where armies of overall-clad laborers swarm over construction sites, seldom noticed by those in the plush office blocks and shopping malls.

Many laborers are paid less than 1,000 dirhams ($270) a month and are typically saddled with large debts.

According to Business and Human Rights Resource Center, nearly 90% of Dubai's 3.1 million residents are expats, many of whom are migrant workers brought in to work on construction projects or in service jobs.

Most workers come alone on the promise of much higher salaries than in their home countries, so they can send money back to their families.

But Dubai and the UAE have long been the subject of complaints of mistreatment of workers. Migrant workers say they often face brutal work conditions, shifts of 12 hours or more, and that companies withhold paychecks or workers' passports so as not to let them quit or return home.

Most workers are brought over by recruiters or recruitment agencies, many of which promise exaggerated salaries or job descriptions that differ greatly from what the workers end up doing

The "kafala," or visa sponsorship, system has been singled out as perpetuating some of the worst abuse, by Human Rights Watch. The system requires employers to sponsor employees' visas for a fee, which the employers frequently pass on to workers.

Many workers are in debt to their employers for the cost of arranging their contracts, visa, and travel to Dubai, the New York Times reported.

Under the kafala system, if a worker tries to leave their job without permission, they can face fines, prison, or deportation. As a result, many have little legal recourse if they find themselves in a bad situation or one differing from what recruiters promised.

"There is a huge dependence on migrant workers who have employment terms that are no different than indentured servitude," Sarah Leah Whitson, the director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group that documents abuses of migrant workers, told The New York Times last year.

"This is a system that's put in place to entrap workers."

A Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative report has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in Gulf countries, with an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf countries.

 

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2021 that workers in UAE suffer from fostered labor abuses especially against low-paid migrant workers.

Labor abuses persist, driven by an exploitative kafala (visa sponsorship) system, under which employers control migrant workers’ presence in the country.

“Low-paid migrant workers especially face serious abuses, most commonly unpaid and delayed wages,” HRW said.

Tens of thousands of migrant workers faced massive unemployment and were left stranded in dire conditions without legal residencies.

“Many struggled with unpaid wages and wage theft, and were unable to pay rent or buy food,” it concluded.

The Covid-19 pandemic has further exposed and amplified the ways in which migrant workers’ rights are violated.

In 2020, migrant workers in Dubai were left jobless because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Telegraph reported that their visas expired and with no salaries, many had to leave their accommodation and had no place of their own.

“Consequently, several migrant workers were forced to sleep outside. These workers were dismissed by their employers and also ran out of money to return home,” The Telegraph reported.

One of the most famous practices against foreign workers in the UAE is the withdrawal of passports in what looks like detention for them and forcing them to work on arbitrary and unjust conditions against workers, as the British The Guardian newspaper pointed out.

In a report on the conditions of migrant workers working on the infamous Saadiyat Island resort project, the report confirmed the bad reputation the project has due to its frequent reported exploitation of foreign workers.

Even the company responsible for the project, TDIC, to cope with the pressures it is under because of its notorious project in terms of dealing with workers, and to reassure its foreign partners, has allowed foreign workers in its project to obtain their passports, which is confirmation that the confiscation of foreign workers' passports is normal.