Dubai waterfront plans!Wow!

[Danny]

Has anyone seen this?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4822009626591036364&q=muslim+rave

I hope that link works,if not,just google "dubai waterfront"

I wonder about this.But then again I wonder about EVERYTHING I see these days. There must be some dirty fingers in this pie.Anyone know anything else about this project or Nakheel?

 

[Tigersoap]

This project is quite well known from me because I have seen quite a few Tv report about Dubai these past years.

Dubai construction workers were mostly Indian until the Chinese came.
Their working conditions to build all those five starts Hotels and resorts are absolutely terryfying (Long working hours under the burning sun,no insurance, living in pre-fab camps with not much electricity, clean water and so on....).

These are the new slaves building the new pyramids.

A small report from 2005 can be found here : http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20050919135817472

I can't help but be really disgusted at how they still portray Dubai a rich man's heaven on earth.

 

[j0da]

Big companies, including many Western companies who employ these workers, defend these conditions saying that workers have come to the UAE voluntarily.

Another fine example of pure ponerological double speak. So if we start massive protests against polluted air big companies will say "those people have chosen to breathe voluntarily"?

 

[Tigersoap]

Big companies, including many Western companies who employ these workers, defend these conditions saying that workers have come to the UAE voluntarily.

Another fine example of pure ponerological double speak. So if we start massive protests against polluted air big companies will say "those people have chosen to breathe voluntarily"?

Exactly.

In that particular case, they forget to say that they confiscate the passports so they can't get out voluntarily.

 

[wilecoyote]

What a coincidence. My uncle was just telling me about the terrible working conditions in the UAE, particularly Dubai where they confiscate the construction workers passports so they are forced to stay and work in the unbearable conditions.

What a synchronity.

 

[Ruth]

That should be against the law shouldn't it?

Why is one government allowing (presumably) a private company in its own country, possession of documents that belong to another government? You'd think that would a complete International embarrassment that was just too hard to ignore. The fact that it does seem to be being ignored both by the owners of the passports (foreign governments) and the government where the theft is occuring; suggests some level of complicity between the two.

Mind you, sometimes the only way to get something out of a government (particularly a corrupt or totalitarian one) is to embarrass them royally. They just can't take it and end up doing 'the right thing'.

 

[aurora]

I have been to the United Arab Emirates quite a number of times on business as I was working for a Turkish construction company. We have also sent workers there but we would make sure that they would stay in a decent hotel with AC and shower, all meals included etc. The system works like this : A local client opens a bid and the mostly local construction companies offer prices for the bid. Someone wins the bid and then it subcontracts the various jobs to sub-contractors. When foreign workers go to the emirates, their visa is issued on sponsorship which means that the company who has been a sponsor for these workers is literally responsible of everything they do while they stay in the emirates. So taking the passports is a way of guaranteeing that the workers only work for them (not that I approve of it) But once we had an incident with our workers. They were working on the roof and they refused to wear safety belts but the site manager insisted that they should wear the belts because if an accident occurs then the site manager would be responsible. But our worker refused to wear it anyway and told all the other workers we had sent to stop working. I had stomach aches talking with the workers and telling them to start working again because we had to pay penalties for delayed assembly . There were a lot of indian (from India) and philipino workers there. Yes, they work in deplorable conditions. And the heat is unbearable plus the high humidity. It is 45- 50 degrees centigrade in the shade, your brain just boils. Our agent had told us that they stayed at shacks at the site and that our workers were lucky !