Of human bondage

At an Independence Day ceremony for Indian nationals in Abu Dhabi, Talmiz Ahmad, Indian ambassador to the U.A.E., praised bilateral relations between the two countries. The sentiment was repeated in Dubai by the Indian consul-general Venu Rajamony, who added that Indians in the U.A.E. should “abide by the rules and regulations of the host country.” However, both left serious doubts as to whether mutual interests extended to the human rights of low-wage Indian labourers.

The Emirati economy almost entirely depends on cheap labour, now 99 per cent of the private sector’s workforce. Migrant workers from India, Dubai’s most valuable “labour exporting country,” comprise 60 per cent of the 1.2 million (majority-Keralite) Indian residents in the U.A.E. While the U.A.E. is highly interventionist in matters of financial investment, it has largely neglected the labour sector, enacting some policy revisions only after embarrassing scandals which turned international attention away from its pop-fantasy skyline and toward the workers’ near-medieval conditions of servitude.

The U.A.E.’s Ministry of Labour claims that worker conditions are improving. In 2007, it published the 23-page “Protection of the Rights of Workers in the U.A.E.,” which includes unremarkable modifications such as making the confiscation of a non-U.A.E. national’s passport illegal. The changes serve to highlight the government’s extreme negligence over corporate labour practices. The Indian Government has up to now been too lax about the safety and well-being of its workers overseas. Taking active measures to protect the human rights of all Indian nationals, especially the weakest, is imperative.

India should demand that the U.A.E. adopt the full standards of the International Labour Organisation. While the U.A.E. has adopted some standards, it ignores some of the most important criteria of the ILO’s Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, including the freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining. After a protest by construction workers in Abu Dhabi in February 2007, the Ministry of Labour quietly expelled 14 of the “instigators.” Workers should not be criminalised for demanding basic rights.

The Ministry of Labour’s website boasts a worker “break” period from 12.30 pm to 3 pm in July and August, when temperatures surge above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet it fails to mention that the break used to extend until 4.30 pm, before construction companies lobbied the government. Corporate pressure is all the more egregious as most megaproject developers pay no taxes, and many are owned 100 per cent by ruling Emirati governments.

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