Arabtec organises labour accommodation tour for reporters

Dubai: Following the airing earlier this month of a BBC TV programme on the allegedly bad living conditions faced by workers in Dubai, one of the companies criticised in the documentary on Thursday organised a tour of its labour accommodations for reporters.

An episode of Panorama entitled 'Slum dogs and Millionaires' claimed to 'reveal the darker side of Dubai that works behind the scenes to make the glamorous image a reality'. In the documentary, one of Arabtec Construction's labour accommodation buildings was used as an example of the harsh conditions faced by workers in the Emirate face.

In the programme, the accommodation located in Nad Al Sheba was shown to be flooded with sewage.

But the company disputed this.

Ammar Al Hejjawi, labour accommodation coordinator at Arabtec, said: "The allegations in the programme are not true and the management wants people to know the true conditions of our accommodation so we decided to arrange this tour".

Arabtec employs 55,000 workers and has 11 permanent labour accommodations in Dubai and three temporary ones, including the one in Nad Al Sheba.

The media tour organised by the company started in a Jebel Ali accommodation that has 510 rooms accommodating about 4,200 workers. The accommodation has 28 kitchens, first aid rooms and bathrooms. The floors were clean and workers rooms were very tidy, with shoes placed in an orderly fashion on a shoe rack. The rooms smelled of detergent, indicating that they had has just been cleaned.

Members of the Arabtec management, who were conducting the tour, insisted that the accommodation was cleaned on a daily basis. With such a large number of workers in one place it is inevitable that things get dirty, they said.

In the Nad Al Sheba accommodation, which houses about 6,000 workers, there were portable concrete houses and the rooms were less clean. The accommodation was surrounded by dirt roads.

Mahmoud Al Shanti, Administration Manager at the company, said “the reality of our accommodations was not portrayed in the programme. When they filmed it was raining and many parts of the city was flooded not only our accommodation,''.