Sunanda K Datta-Ray: Behind the glitter

WHERE MONEY TALKS

Workers in the UAE may finally get help from the Indian consulate.

Everyone is impressed by the Manhattan-style skyline of places such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but few spare much thought for the squalid lives of the men whose toil creates those magic skyscrapers of marble, glass and steel flanking sweeping motorways. This may change now that labourers in the United Arab Emirates have found a voice and India's consulate-general in Dubai finds itself drawn into negotiations between them, employers and the government.

Unfortunately, all this happened just as back in India, the Supreme Court laid down further grounds to discipline workers "" adding disobedience, indiscipline and making baseless charges against superiors to the earlier list of offences (sleeping at the workplace and abusing or assaulting seniors) for which employees can be punished. No one will disagree that most Indian workers, especially in public sector undertakings, need a dose of discipline. But much depends on perception and interpretation, and one can only hope that the Supreme Court's new-found rigorousness will not prompt Yash Sinha, our consul-general in Dubai, or C M Bhandari, the ambassador in Abu Dhabi, to overlook the travails of nearly three million Indian workers in the UAE.

The UAE labour minister, Ali bin Abdullah al Ka'abi, says workers are entitled to feel aggrieved only if wages are delayed, housing and working conditions are bad or unhealthy, and if there's no health insurance. But what of arbitrary deductions such as contractors withholding wages for a month or two as a form of surety? The quality of housing and working conditions is highly subjective, and usually within the employer's unilateral discretion. Medical insurance can be equally hazardous, as I know only too well, having just received justice from the Ombudsman two years after my Indian insurance company refused to honour its obligations abroad. Few manual workers are aware of that channel of redress or have the power to tap it.

Perhaps, the more than 2,000 employees of the Al Ahmadiya Contracting and Trade Company who went on the rampage at the end of last month would not have done so if trade union activity had been permitted. Workers generally would certainly have been less disgruntled if the law had stipulated a minimum wage. Or if domestic staff did not lie altogether outside the purview of the law, which means they are totally at the mercy of employers. What I find especially revealing is that one of the government's 10 supposedly important labour announcements last August ordered any company that employs more than 100 workers (read foreigners) to engage a local public relations officer (PRO). More than 1,600 UAE citizens were thus appointed PROs.

Spin doctors must make a living in the UAE as in India. But the stipulation suggests that the authorities set more store by packaging and presentation than by remedying the causes of unrest. It's a bit like the British government traditionally appointing a Royal Commission on any issue that it wants to shelve. Similarly, the UAE seems to believe that glib PROs can talk their way out of any uncomfortable publicity that workers' complaints might attract.

Even PROs cannot put a spin on unrest when representatives of the world's press, located in the brand new Dubai Media City, can see for themselves the sharp contrast between the magnificence that poorly paid Asian workers create and the shabby way they are treated. Envy is to be expected. The absence of legitimate channels of negotiation, official indifference (16 per cent of a survey's respondents blame insufficient government control) and the fact that a powerful sheikh owns the employing company compound the situation.

Mind you, the entire fault must not be laid at the employers' doors. Riots that cause damage worth 3 million dirhams are certainly deplorable. Dubai, with its new police hotline for workers' grievances, is a haven of liberal compassion compared to Bahrain, Omar and Qatar, which have gained a reputation for cracking down harshly on protest. But even Dubai tried to distract attention from the causes of unrest by blaming a handful of alleged troublemakers for misleading the rest. The hope seems to be that the others will fall in line if a few are deported.

That is nonsense, of course. But the agitation has not highlighted adequately the harmful role of middlemen and recruiting agents. They produce contracts in Arabic that Malayali labourers sign unknowingly; the wages they guarantee are not paid; sometimes the companies for whom they hire people don't even exist. The air-conditioning they promise doesn't always materialise in searingly hot asbestos sheds. Agents tell workers that they will have the day off when the temperature rises above 50 degrees but, officially, it never does. Few labourers know in advance that construction work continues round the clock in shifts.

Unlike NRIs and PIOs in Britain or the US, these workers repatriate all their savings. Unlike migrants elsewhere, they also remain Indian citizens. But the UAE also owes them a tremendous debt for building and servicing the ultra-modern cities that are the region's pride. India must not allow the Gulf's rulers to gloss over that debt by shortchanging a basically defenceless community. Dubai is not just duty-free shopping.