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Conclusion
Dubai ruler Sheikh Moham-mad bin
Rashed al-Maktoum, who is vice-president of the UAE, last November
ordered sweeping measures to protect foreign laborers.
But for Human Rights Watch, the
safety of foreign workers—who have been powering the UAE’s
construction frenzy—is a matter of enforcing existing regulations.
“It goes back to the
implementation of existing laws... The law requires that workers
should have instructions on safety” measures, Ghaemi told Agence
France-Presse.
He said the Fortune Tower
incident has highlighted the urgency of increasing the number of
inspectors employed by the labor ministry to ensure that safety
standards are met on the numerous construction sites.
In a November 2006 report in
which HRW slammed the UAE’s alleged record of abuse of migrant
workers, it said the ministry employs only 140 inspectors to oversee
the practices of over 240,000 businesses.
The rights watchdog said that the
government had promised in September to increase the number of
inspectors to 1,000 within 18 months.
“They have always promised to
increase the number” of inspectors, said Ghaemi.
The latest incident prompted the
head of Dubai’s Civil Defense department to urge contractors to
train workers on safety measures.
“Laborers need to know how to
use their equipment safely,” Brigadier Rashed Thani al-Matroushi
was quoted as saying in the local press.
“Laborers are poor people, not
educated enough to know how to respond to these situations,” he
said, referring to the majority of low-wage laborers.
Human Rights Watch’s report
said that most of the UAE’s 500,000 migrant construction workers
come from South Asian countries, while the total migrant worker
population is 2,738,000, or 95 percent of the workforce.
Fortune Investment, the
developer, announced an ex gratia relief package of up to 12 years
salary to those affected by the blaze, in addition to the
compensation which should be paid by the contracting firm, and legal
insurance claims.
But Human Rights Watch fears that
the larger issue is that many fatalities are not reported by
employers as work incidents.
“Numbers of the dead people are
shrouded in mystery,” Ghaemi said, claiming that “companies are
not reporting [incidents] as required by law,” and that the
government is not able to distinguish between on-site deaths and
other cases.
The embassies of India, Pakistan
and Bangladesh repatriated the bodies of 880 construction workers in
2004, the Human Rights Watch report said, adding that the government
can account for only a few of these deaths “primarily because it
appears not to enforce its own laws requiring employers to report
worksite deaths and injuries.”
“This is the result of the lack
of accountability,” said Ghaemi. “There is no deterrent for
employers.”
--AFP
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