Global Economic Crisis Hits Dubai

Global Economic Crisis Hits Dubai
By Mandy Clark
Dubai
05 March 2009


Laborers begin work at a construction site in Dubai, 27 Jan 2009
The tiny Persian Gulf emirate, Dubai, has long sought to position itself as an international finance and trading center within today's global economy. It built an ultra-modern image, with luxury hotels and resorts and high-profile sporting events. But the downturn has already sent some foreign workers packing. For unemployed workers from South Asia, that is sometimes not an option.

In Dubai's hey day, the sound of construction was everywhere. High rises and tourist resorts were built by legions of foreign workers, most of them from India and Pakistan. Dubai became an international magnet, reinventing itself as a financial capital and tourist mecca in the Persian Gulf. Then the global crisis reached this outpost and boom turned into bust.

Many have been unemployed for more than a month. They say they cannot return home because their employers are holding their passports and have ordered them to wait until work picks up.

More than half of the construction projects in the United Arab Emirates, worth $582 billion, have been put on hold, according to the market research firm, Proleads. Some projects are still going ahead, thanks, in part, to the $10 billion bailout from the UAE's capital, Abu Dhabi. But, many workers are unemployed and stuck here.

Worker advocacy groups - including the United Nations International Labor Organization - have increased pressure for wider protection covering the hundreds of thousands of unskilled construction workers who flooded regions of the Gulf during the building boom and now face the fallout from leaner times.