“It is an open secret that once you hire a maid, you have absolute power over her. You take her passport – everyone does; you decide when to pay her, and when – if ever – she can take a break; and you decide who she talks to. She speaks no Arabic. She cannot escape.”

Come on, we’ve all got ayi’s in China too but we don’t claim any power over them, they’re employees, not slaves.

Incidentally, I’ve got a mate in Dubai, he agrees with the comments about incompetent people in senior positions, but isn’t that the same all over the world? (albeit to a lower degree)

Hek

First up, one thing I took a little issue with was Hari saying that workers were now transported in buses because the cattle trucks were an ‘eyesore to expats’. I know for a fact in Bahrain (again, not Dubai but comparable) that there are many groups working very hard to outlaw the transporting of workers in open backed trucks (actually it already is illegal, though it has never been enforced). This is not because it is an ‘eyesore’ but out of an attempt to introduce at least some measure of safety and comfort into these workers lives. Of course I realise that investigative journalism needs to be emotive, but that really doesn’t give credit to the individuals and organisations that are trying to improve conditions for these men.

Anyway, as to the China – Dubai comparison, I think the main, and most important difference I’ve noticed is that in China the workers being exploited are at least Chinese. Sure you may be a lesser brand of Chinese, but you could make an argument (perhaps tenuous and idealistic and of course unevenly) that all of China’s citizens benefit from China’s development. Because they are citizens.

In Dubai and the wider gulf, this is not the case. The workers arrive from abroad, literally pour their labour and lives into these projects, and then are sent home (I think 6 years is the limit in Dubai). The idea that these people might share in the fruits of that labour is laughable. They have precisely one thing to offer, and the whole system is geared towards the most efficient extraction of that thing from them. They are divided by language, skin colour, sometimes religion, and the belief that they are on the one hand taking jobs from the locals, and on the other only fit to do work that locals deem beneath them. The fact that these people are literally responsible for building their country, for paving their roads and washing their cars and carting away their shit earns them only contempt.

In China the poverty was ever present and at times shocking, but I guess I could console myself by thinking that as an educator I was helping the whole country move along to a brighter future, where at least maybe their children would have a better lot. Here you are faced with ranks of disposable people whose best hope is to get out of here slightly better off than when they arrived, and with all limbs and organs in working order.

It’s all rather depressing.

“That virtually all the criticisms could equally be applied to China will not be lost on anyone who reads it and lives or has lived in the Middle Kingdom.”

Absolutley – and there’s your China connection. Post justified!

Where we lived, my parents and I used to take sacks of rice around to our Filipino friends’ houses, since they didn’t have a lot of extra money. There were usually five or six workers living in a two bedroom flat. Their lives were hard, but the conditions were not like in the article, fortunately. Even so, we felt these people were truly being taken advantage of and I’m sure there were far worse cases. I’ve heard about lots of cruelty to maids.

The last time I was in Dubai was 1994… It wasn’t much more than an airport and a few malls. I’m sure I’d be appalled by what it has become. Has Dubai reached its height? I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more articles like this in the future.