Fenton Report Video

Friday, January 11, 2008

UAE Construction Workers



Migrant workers make up over 85% of the population of the UAE (United Arab Emirates), a booming construction area with dozens of large multi phase developments such in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and other emirates include projects such as the Burj Dubai, Ski Dubai, Dubailand and the Mall of Arabia. Migrant workers make up virtually every category of employee in the UAE from CEOs and engineers to cement mixers, drivers, accountants and janitors. Highly skilled and educated workers from western nations come to the Middle East for tax free income and often increased wages and opportunity. Most attention to migrant workers focuses on the manual laborers. Numbering over 300,000, manual laborers make up a large amount of the population. Attention has focused on these workers for their wages and working conditions which are generally poor by western standards.

Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and other wealth oil exporting nations also have large numbers of migrant workers who are mostly focused on building infrastructure and implementing the huge investments made by these countries. Workers come from all over the world in addition to the higher paid, educated and skilled workers from the UK, US, Ireland and throughout Europe and Asia, manual laborers come from Myanmar (Burma), India, Pakistan, Somalia or other countries. India and Pakistan also have a large number of highly skilled and highly paid workers.

Lack of unions and organized labor makes life for the construction workers very different from the US however most workers are very happy for the opportunity and the economics of wage equalization exist because of a very liberal work immigration policy and a robust economy.

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Monday, December 31, 2007

Largest Mall in the World – Dubai UAE




This video shows the construction area just outside the city, the area where the one of the worlds largest malls is being constructed. The leader of Dubai, Sheik Mohammad bin Rashid al Maktoum is one of the great visionaries of today. Under his leadership, as well as his family, Dubai has grown from a small out of the way city to an international business and tourism center.

Dubai is one illustration of the changing face of the Gulf and the Arab world and the Middle East as a whole. Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as well as other areas in the UAE such as Abu Dhabi are all undergoing a similar transformation.

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