Village Journals
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Dubai a ?dead end? for some South Asians
For some South Asians Dubai is everything they ever wanted, but for others it is a ?dead end?, according to a pictorial essay on the Emirates in the current issue of the National Geographic magazine.
Sixty percent of the population of Dubai is South Asian, and only one out of eight of its residents is an Arab. Of late, there has been labour unrest because of harsh conditions of work and day-to-day life.
The average labourer makes five dollars a day, working 12-hour shifts in scorching heat. There were 900 construction deaths in 2004, according to Human Rights Watch. Several workers feel trapped in Dubai, mired in debt to unscrupulous agents in their countries of origin. Reacting to such abuses and the bad publicity they have generated, Sheikh Mohammed, the ruler, recently announced that workers would be allowed to unionise, and ordered all contractors to halt work for four hours during the extra hot months of July and August.
The article said that creating man-made islands offshore had killed coral, destroyed turtle nesting sites and upset the marine ecology of the Western Persian Gulf. ?Behind the glittering skyscrapers, lies a late-night world of fleabag hotels and prostitutes, Indian and Russian mobsters, money launderers and smugglers of everything from guns and diamonds to human beings,? said the article. It quoted a State Department report as maintaining that Dubai?s efforts to curtail human trafficking fell short of even ?minimum standards? as some 10,000 women in the UAE may be victims of sex traffickers.
The article praised Dubai for its tolerance for various religious faiths. Unlike some Arab countries, it allows free worship. Alongside its bars and nightclubs, there are mosques and churches and Hindu temples, and the Emirate is free of ethnic conflict. Sheikh Mohammad, who is popularly known as ?Sheikh Mo?, told National Geographic, ?I don?t know who?s a Sunni and who?s a Shia, and I don?t care. If you work hard, if you don?t bother your neighbour, there is a place for you in Dubai.?
Sixty percent of the population of Dubai is South Asian, and only one out of eight of its residents is an Arab. Of late, there has been labour unrest because of harsh conditions of work and day-to-day life.
The average labourer makes five dollars a day, working 12-hour shifts in scorching heat. There were 900 construction deaths in 2004, according to Human Rights Watch. Several workers feel trapped in Dubai, mired in debt to unscrupulous agents in their countries of origin. Reacting to such abuses and the bad publicity they have generated, Sheikh Mohammed, the ruler, recently announced that workers would be allowed to unionise, and ordered all contractors to halt work for four hours during the extra hot months of July and August.
The article said that creating man-made islands offshore had killed coral, destroyed turtle nesting sites and upset the marine ecology of the Western Persian Gulf. ?Behind the glittering skyscrapers, lies a late-night world of fleabag hotels and prostitutes, Indian and Russian mobsters, money launderers and smugglers of everything from guns and diamonds to human beings,? said the article. It quoted a State Department report as maintaining that Dubai?s efforts to curtail human trafficking fell short of even ?minimum standards? as some 10,000 women in the UAE may be victims of sex traffickers.
The article praised Dubai for its tolerance for various religious faiths. Unlike some Arab countries, it allows free worship. Alongside its bars and nightclubs, there are mosques and churches and Hindu temples, and the Emirate is free of ethnic conflict. Sheikh Mohammad, who is popularly known as ?Sheikh Mo?, told National Geographic, ?I don?t know who?s a Sunni and who?s a Shia, and I don?t care. If you work hard, if you don?t bother your neighbour, there is a place for you in Dubai.?