Standing on the shoulders of giants

As Dubai's polite society sits in Starbucks with sickly sweet caramel Macciatos supping the good life, on the other side of the glass with battered tiffin boxes and recycled bottles of Masafi are the wide-eyed labourers busy building the city. 
 
While their contribution to the region has been as immense as the infrastructure they have developed, Gulf News regularly reports on employers who abuse the lack of worker rights in the region and in so doing drive an invaluable section of the population to despair, some to suicide.

Will the new law help?
 
A new labour law is on the way that aims to protect the weakest in society. Will it be enough to prevent the excesses?

The country needs it to be. 
 
For the first time, and in spite of its huge marketing budget, the world's media has turned on the UAE.

Gulf News monitors the international press and the number of distinctly negative stories regarding Dubai in particular has begun to match the number of positive ones. 
 
All the stories take the same theme, contrasting the rising skyscrapers, five star resorts, "rich locals" and pampered holiday maker with an impoverished Ahmad or an Arif, a Mohammad or a Ravi - a "typical" worker living in squalor in overcrowded labour camps, unpaid for six months, coping with a sense of powerlessness and shame that they are not able to support their families at home.
 
The world's press is turning on Dubai - in the way it has done thousands of times before.

It is is the way newspaper editors have always worked. Build a person or place up and ride on their growing celebrity or fame.

Once it's up there, knock it down hard and use its shame to drive up circulation figures.
 
Dubai has been a darling of the world's media for years. However, the winds are picking up speed. If the present rains falling on Dubai are whipped up into a full-scale storm there will be commercial impact.

Already the US-UAE Free Trade Agreement is feeling the pressure.
 
That's headline news but there will be many smaller, intangible consequences of continued reported abuses.

Dubai has become a leading tourist destination, logistics hub, it is working on becoming a financial centre and it is already the regional headquarters of the world's largest companies.

The UAE in general, and Dubai in particular, has worked so hard, for so long to diversify its economy and become an attractive place for the world to do business.

Images of abused workers threaten to tarnish all of this.
 
Business has a social conscience too, and wherever there is corporate responsibility, there is a fear of being associated with exploitation.

Dubai really does not want its pleasures to be seen as dependent on the pain of others.
 
Within the Gulf News office there have been stories over the last few weeks of reporters from Europe and US hovering around labour camps, looking for a way to get in, while security does its best to keep them out.

But why are they being kept out? The natural question for anyone to ask is what is wrong with these places?

Opening up

The answer, in many cases, may be very little. Who knows?

The region has long had a problem with transparency and opening itself up to scrutiny. Doing so, however, is ultimately the only way to silence a growing number of critics looking to make a story.

That and truly looking after untouchables we barely notice, but upon whose shoulders we are all standing.