Labour pain relief
The sentiment is commendable, it's just a shame it has taken this long:
Dubai: All necessary measures must be taken to ensure the rights of expatriate workers are protected and their living and working conditions are significantly improved, His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai has ordered authorities yesterday.
This part is particularly significant:
And in a groundbreaking move, [Sheikh Mohammed] instructed the Naturalisation and Residency Department to implement special contracts between domestic workers (servants and housemaids) and their employers that limit their working hours and grant them their full rights.
Sadly, too many domestic workers are treated at best as serfs, at worst as slaves by some families. Contracts is a start, but outsourcing their sponsorship to a government agency or recruitment firm would be better.
Dubai: All necessary measures must be taken to ensure the rights of expatriate workers are protected and their living and working conditions are significantly improved, His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai has ordered authorities yesterday.
This part is particularly significant:
And in a groundbreaking move, [Sheikh Mohammed] instructed the Naturalisation and Residency Department to implement special contracts between domestic workers (servants and housemaids) and their employers that limit their working hours and grant them their full rights.
Sadly, too many domestic workers are treated at best as serfs, at worst as slaves by some families. Contracts is a start, but outsourcing their sponsorship to a government agency or recruitment firm would be better.
Labels: maids
6 Comments:
Surely if a person is enslaved by their 'employer/sponsor' it would be better for them to leave the county anyway?
They cannot just leave. With employers illegally holding passports, and failing to pay salaries, how on earth are they supposed to? Quite apart from the fact that many got themselves into debt just to come here (again through the illegal extortions of employers and recruiters).
Dubai stock exchange lost over Dhs 2 Billion this week.
While most stock markets across the world are booming, Dubai has lost over 11 billion over the last month or so.
Our "booming" city. sigh
"They cannot just leave...how on earth are they supposed to?
In reference to that; I remember an interesting story. About a year ago I took my PRO to labour. While hanging around outside waiting for him to finish, I ran across this one labourer by himself.
Turns out his entire company had been closed down and everyone had been repatriated - except him. His sponsor had agreed to meet him in labour and sign the release paper.
That was three months ago.
Everyday since, that man has been coming to Labour and from 9am to 2pm waiting patiently outside, hoping against hope that the local will appear and sign his release.
That must be a circle of hell Dante forgot to write about.
A noble sentiment, Secret, but like most brain storms that blow around like the shemal here, it will never be enforced. Until and unless there is someone forcing employers to treat their domestic servants like human beings, those contracts will be only so much toilet paper. Slavery may have been officially abolished here in the 1960s, but the slave owning mentality is still very much alive.
Dubai Entrepreneur:
I know. I told him that. Not sure if he believed me, but haven't seen him there since.
One thing the previous article does not explicitly mention is that the UAE has the highest disparity between the male and female population( 66 men 33% female according to uae census 2006).. So what you say?
Well i personally think that it is not the labourers fault for gawking at women when they rarely see a women( forget about actually being with one). And no matter how taboo sexual tendencies are in this region you cannot deny that they are basic biological instinct innate to every human being. When the labourers do not see their wives for months on end and only interact with men 6 days a week, the one hour they get to look at women is a normal reaction of a systematic failure in this society.
I am not justifying their actions, I am only trying to be empathic.
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