The New Nation - Internet Edition

Mohammad A. Auwal

PROPHET Muhammad (SA) said: "When you see a wrong being done, stop it with your hand; speak out against it if you cannot stop it; hate it in your heart if you cannot speak out; but hating the wrong in heart is the lowest form of faith." Following this hadith, I am speaking out against a colossal injustice because I cannot change it by hand, nor can I absorb it silently. I am currently drafting a lengthy SOS from the blue-collar migrant workers in the Gulf countries. I want to briefly outline some points today, hoping to provide the details in future. I am requesting the Bangladesh government to investigate where and how the Bangladeshi blue-collar workers work and live in the Gulf countries.

The government must inquire into the systematic exploitation of the workers and the violation of their reproductive rights, their rights to get married in time, live with and take care of their loved ones, raise children, and so forth. The problem is actually an open secret, but based on media reports, my personal travel and work experiences, and my interviews with hundreds of blue-collar workers and concerned people, I can reasonably claim that a systematic exploitation of unskilled migrant workers is widespread in all Gulf countries. Briefly, the unskilled foreign workers generally in the Gulf countries, and particularly in Kuwait are under unfair pay, promised one salary figure during recruitment and paid another once they are "taken into custody" (literally made a captive workforce).

They are forced to work long hours with minimal or no extra pay, beaten up or threatened with expulsion from the country if they complain about their non-payment of salaries, given no weekly or monthly or even annual holidays, herded into living like animals in extremely overcrowded rooms (making 20-36 people share one bathroom), and denied many of their basic human rights including the freedom to move around, to change jobs or employers, or even to visit their homelands.

The conditions of those who work for households are sometimes even far worse. As early as in 1998, G. Pundyk wrote in New Internationalist: "Almost daily in Kuwait local newspapers report the injustices and crimes committed against domestic workers: a man dowsed with petrol and set alight; a Sri Lankan woman convicted of murdering her unborn fetus by repeatedly punching her stomach after being raped by her employer; a maid found hanging from her employer's fan; a Filipino woman picked up by two policemen and raped." This description still reflects the pattern of what is reported happening on a daily basis in Kuwait even today. Recently a report in the Kuwait Times stated: "A Bangladeshi houseboy escaped death at the hands of his employer who he alleges brutally mistreated him in a lockup for nearly six months.

The 25 year old houseboy was very weak, from severe malnutrition, when Kuwait Times met him at the Bangladeshi embassy." Stories that appear in the censored or self-censored press of the Gulf states, however, are just the tips of huge icebergs of abuse and systematic exploitation under way in Kuwait and other Gulf countries. Furthermore, rarely do the media cover scholarly analysis of the workers' problems, and rarely do they explain how the workers are being exploited.

To understand this issue, consider the following points: First, consider the difference between the ratio of the wages of the (middle income-level) skilled and the unskilled workers in the United States and ratio in the Gulf countries, as sampled in the accompanying chart: The chart clearly indicates that an unskilled labourer in the US is paid roughly 50 percent of the salary of a middle-income skilled worker, but in the Gulf states, and specifically in Kuwait, a similar unskilled worker is paid roughly 2 percent of the salary of a comparable middle-income skilled worker. Second, the blue-collar workers are treated as disposable people and have absolutely no job security. They are given short-term one or two year contracts, and even though these contracts are often renewed, in most cases the workers have to pay for their extension, which leave them with little money to buy foods and clothes for themselves or to send to their families back home.

Third, there is a huge qualitative difference between the wages of the workers in UAE and those in Bangladesh or other developing countries. In Bangladesh, for example, they live at home and have greater purchasing power with whatever they earn, but in the Gulf countries, their wages do not allow them to support families in the vicinity of where they work and live and thus deprive them of their vital reproductive rights. The low wages provide only an extremely minimalist lifestyle for the workers abroad. Fourth, the low wages do not allow the workers to make regular visits to their homes either.

As a result, they end up spending all their reproductive time unmarried or away from the near and dear ones, which takes a huge toll on their emotional life. Typically, a young man can visit his wife once for a couple of weeks in every four or five years. Many of them have not visited home even once over 10 years. Recently, Rubon bin Rania reported in weekly Jai Jai Din how a Bangladeshi man, enslaved in a desert farm for 25 years, has never visited home and became emotionally unable to go back. Local Kuwaiti press including Kuwait television has reported even more tragic stories of suicides by migrant workers who failed to overcome their financial loss or emotional trauma.

Fifth, essentially the Gulf states are economically forcing workers to stay away from the loved ones for years. This practice contradicts Islamic law, which the Arab leaders profess to uphold. Consider the fact that Omar Ibn Khattab, the second Caliph of Islam, after consulting with women, established a law that banned men from staying away from their wives for more than six months even when they were engaged in wars. He didn't just stop at making the law; he provided the appropriate adjustments to ensure that no one could violate it. There are strange and very deplorable contradictions between the beliefs and the practices of the Gulf statesmen.

They are very generous when it comes to providing disaster relief anywhere in the world, but they are very callous about ensuring fair wages to those who are working for them day and night, cooking their meals, cleaning their streets and buildings, building their roads, driving their cars, watering their fields, or guarding their homes. Kuwaitis, for example, top the generous donors in the Muslim world. Just recently they gave $100 million to the quake victims in Pakistan and $500 million to the Katrina victims in the US. Yet, oddly, it is in Kuwait where some of most egregious violations of the poor workers' rights are taking place. It is the Kuwait embassy in Dhaka that requires Taka 1,250 from the poor Bangladeshis as a fee for authenticating academic transcripts or certificates, while the Kuwaiti embassy in Washington requires no such fees from the rich Americans.

There are many generous people who personally help the workers with their zakat money. In fact, they are the best of people, especially, the Islamic scholars who talk about these issues in mosques and on television programs to raise public consciousness. Even then, for the few persons who receive help primarily in the form of zakat or sadqah (optional charity), many more end up being badly exploited. The conditions of the Bangladeshi and other workers in UAE may not be as horrible as they are in Kuwait. But based on the media reports, they may not be much better either. During the 2001-02, I saw how the workers were being transported between their "barracks" and worksites, squeezed cheek by jowl into tin-shed vehicles the way cattle are herded to slaughterhouses in many western countries. Lacking air-coolers, these vehicles are unsuitable for human transportation in the desert heat that goes up to 120 degrees.

Many recent media reports corroborate my observation and experience, as the following excerpt from Khaleej Times signifies: "For many, Dubai is a city that cares. But for four Asian expatriate workers there is not even a roof to cover their heads. This reporter spotted unfortunate workers sleeping in the open near a grimy construction site without any basic facilities like toilets, electricity, or drinking water." In the Gulf today, you can see workers from different ethnicities receive widely differing salaries for same work. For example, Kuwaitis, Egyptians, Indians, Nepalese, and Bangladeshis will have different salaries and living conditions while doing identical work. Bangladesh government must remind the Gulf statesmen to take responsibility for what is being done to the hapless workers in their homelands.

Maintaining an appropriate level of sensitivity, it should raise the issues of fair wages for the labourers. Government can remind them that giving an atom of fair wage (which is obligatory under Islam) is more important than mountains of optional charities. It should remind them that such exploitation would be condemnable, regardless of where it happens and whoever is victim (and also, it might not be limited only in the Gulf countries), but that it happens in the countries that call themselves Muslim countries and claim to be Muslims is all the more deplorable. Ineffable is indeed the magnitude of abuse and suffering that are being visited upon the poor Bangladeshi and many other expatriate workers.

It is ineffable for two main reasons. First, language is always a poor medium of communication. Second, it is risky for individuals like me to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Yet, we all must try our best to speak out against the above injustice, as we try to come up with systematic analysis of the problems and their possible solutions. For now, as much as I ask the government to do its share in upholding the right and dignity of the people of the nation, may I request the journalists who care to dare highlight the human conditions of these people?

Let us go where silence is and bring to the forefront the cries of those whose voices have been drowned in the din of politics and corruption. Their untold stories are available not only in Kuwait and other Gulf Arab states but also in the cities and villages of Bangladesh.

(Mohammad A. Auwal, an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, California State University, Los Angeles, is currently visiting the Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST) in Kuwait.)