MG: They’re slaves because they don’t keep their passport. The minute they land in dubai, the contractor keeps the passport, so they cant go anywhere.
Most of them were not working in their native country, most of them were farmers. So they have no knowledge of the work they will be doing. When they come here, usually they are not trained. They put them for the first couple of the days next to someone and he has to repeat the same thing as his partner, that’s how they learn.
[the contractors] pay for [the worker’s] visa to come here. Once [the workers] get here, they keep their passport. The first couple of years—one year or two years—[the workers] have a loan. They have to give their money back to the contractor who paid for the visa.
SWM: after the economic crisis, how did real estate companies respond to lack of money and the excess of workers?
MG: Twenty percent of the workers had to leave. So they had no choice, they were sent back home without—probably around pay for six to seven months.
SWM: after six months of no pay, still working, how do they afford to eat or travel?
MG: They help each other a lot.
SWM: so there’s some sort of communal organization?
MG: It’s not organized. They just help each other. They share the same rooms so they become very close.
SWM: there’s some strikes recently… how were the workers treated after the strikes? Were they fired immediately?
MG: Some of them were fired, the strikes were stopped immediately—they only lasted two or three days at Palm Jumiera, two years ago. After the strikes, the government decided to put a law that on every construction site, there can’t be more than 20% of workers who are from the same region, so they don’t speak the same language and they cannot communicate and cannot unite.
SWM/ML: wow.
MG: Of course that was not written as law, but it is quite obvious
SWM: how are the labor camps organized?.
MG: There is a corridor in the middle… it’s like a prison. You have an idea how a prison looks…. So you have I would say one to four floors, I haven’t seen more than four. The rooms are are on both sides of the corridor, with showers at the end of the corridor. The last camp I went to—very small—had around 300 workers living there. The camp had only four showers and four toilets
ML: for three hundred people?
MG: Yes. For three hundred people.
ML: Do you see construction picking up in Dubai
MG: No. They are finishing projects that were almost finished, and completely stopping all other construction projects.
ML: we have seen a lot of empty concrete shells of buildings… will these buildings be completed soon
MG; No, I don’t think so. Most of the real estate companies that owned those developments do not exist anymore. So unless someone else has bought the land and will start construction… even the construction companies whose are okay, their main issues are to complete their own projects, perhaps they will be able to complete these stalled projects in five to six years, maybe then. But not now, definitely.
