April 23rd, 2009 |
By Johann Hari | The Independent
Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging.
The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed - the absolute ruler of Dubai - beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He dominates the Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of glass pyramids and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins. And there he stands on the tallest building in the world - a skinny spike, jabbing farther into the sky than any other human construction in history.
But something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed’s smile. The ubiquitous cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new constructions - like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built in 1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island - where rainwater is leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof. This Neverland was built on the Never-Never - and now the cracks are beginning to show. Suddenly it looks less like Manhattan in the sun than Iceland in the desert.
Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing - at last - into history.
I. An Adult Disneyland
Karen Andrews can’t speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she puts her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as creased as her forehead. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai’s finest international hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants who don’t have the heart to move her on. This is not where she thought her Dubai dream would end.
Her story comes out in stutters, over four hours. At times, her old voice - witty and warm - breaks through. Karen came here from Canada when her husband was offered a job in the senior division of a famous multinational. “When he said Dubai, I said - if you want me to wear black and quit booze, baby, you’ve got the wrong girl. But he asked me to give it a chance. And I loved him.”
All her worries melted when she touched down in Dubai in 2005. “It was an adult Disneyland, where Sheikh Mohammed is the mouse,” she says. “Life was fantastic. You had these amazing big apartments, you had a whole army of your own staff, you pay no taxes at all. It seemed like everyone was a CEO. We were partying the whole time.”
Her husband, Daniel, bought two properties. “We were drunk on Dubai,” she says. But for the first time in his life, he was beginning to mismanage their finances. “We’re not talking huge sums, but he was getting confused. It was so unlike Daniel, I was surprised. We got into a little bit of debt.” After a year, she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour.
One doctor told him he had a year to live; another said it was benign and he’d be okay. But the debts were growing. “Before I came here, I didn’t know anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it must be pretty like Canada’s or any other liberal democracy’s,” she says. Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can’t pay, you go to prison.
“When we realised that, I sat Daniel down and told him: listen, we need to get out of here. He knew he was guaranteed a pay-off when he resigned, so we said - right, let’s take the pay-off, clear the debt, and go.” So Daniel resigned - but he was given a lower pay-off than his contract suggested. The debt remaIfined. As soon as you quit your job in Dubai, your employer has to inform your bank. you have any outstanding debts that aren’t covered by your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to leave the country.
“Suddenly our cards stopped working. We had nothing. We were thrown out of our apartment.” Karen can’t speak about what happened next for a long time; she is shaking.
Daniel was arrested and taken away on the day of their eviction. It was six days before she could talk to him. “He told me he was put in a cell with another debtor, a Sri Lankan guy who was only 27, who said he couldn’t face the shame to his family. Daniel woke up and the boy had swallowed razor-blades. He banged for help, but nobody came, and the boy died in front of him.”
Karen managed to beg from her friends for a few weeks, “but it was so humiliating. I’ve never lived like this. I worked in the fashion industry. I had my own shops. I’ve never…” She peters out.
Daniel was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment at a trial he couldn’t understand. It was in Arabic, and there was no translation. “Now I’m here illegally, too,” Karen says. “I’ve got no money, nothing. I have to last nine months until he’s out, somehow.” Looking away, almost paralysed with embarrassment, she asks if I could buy her a meal.
She is not alone. All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars.
“The thing you have to understand about Dubai is - nothing is what it seems,” Karen says at last. “Nothing. This isn’t a city, it’s a con-job. They lure you in telling you it’s one thing - a modern kind of place - but beneath the surface it’s a medieval dictatorship.”
II. Tumbleweed
Thirty years ago, almost all of contemporary Dubai was desert, inhabited only by cactuses and tumbleweed and scorpions. But downtown there are traces of the town that once was, buried amidst the metal and glass. In the dusty fort of the Dubai Museum, a sanitised version of this story is told.
In the mid-18th century, a small village was built here, in the lower Persian Gulf, where people would dive for pearls off the coast. It soon began to accumulate a cosmopolitan population washing up from Persia, the Indian subcontinent, and other Arab countries, all hoping to make their fortune. They named it after a local locust, the daba, who consumed everything before it. The town was soon seized by the gunships of the British Empire, who held it by the throat as late as 1971. As they scuttled away, Dubai decided to ally with the six surrounding states and make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The British quit, exhausted, just as oil was being discovered, and the sheikhs who suddenly found themselves in charge faced a remarkable dilemma. They were largely illiterate nomads who spent their lives driving camels through the desert - yet now they had a vast pot of gold. What should they do with it?
Dubai only had a dribble of oil compared to neighbouring Abu Dhabi - so Sheikh Maktoum decided to use the revenues to build something that would last. Israel used to boast it made the desert bloom; Sheikh Maktoum resolved to make the desert boom. He would build a city to be a centre of tourism and financial services, sucking up cash and talent from across the globe. He invited the world to come tax-free - and they came in their millions, swamping the local population, who now make up just 5 per cent of Dubai. A city seemed to fall from the sky in just three decades, whole and complete and swelling. They fast-forwarded from the 18th century to the 21st in a single generation.
If you take the Big Bus Tour of Dubai - the passport to a pre-processed experience of every major city on earth - you are fed the propaganda-vision of how this happened. “Dubai’s motto is ‘Open doors, open minds’,” the tour guide tells you in clipped tones, before depositing you at the souks to buy camel tea-cosies. “Here you are free. To purchase fabrics,” he adds. As you pass each new monumental building, he tells you: “The World Trade Centre was built by His Highness…”
But this is a lie. The sheikh did not build this city. It was built by slaves. They are building it now.
III. Hidden in plain view
There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang - but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?
Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out.
Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose name in Hindi means “City of Gold”. In the first camp I stop at - riven with the smell of sewage and sweat - the men huddle around, eager to tell someone, anyone, what is happening to them.
Sahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. “To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell,” he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in Sahinal’s village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they would be given great accommodation, great food, and treated well. All they had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work visa - a fee they’d pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold his family land, and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this paradise.
As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat - where western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in summer, when it hits 55 degrees - for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don’t like it, the company told him, go home. “But how can I go home? You have my passport, and I have no money for the ticket,” he said. “Well, then you’d better get to work,” they replied.
Sahinal was in a panic. His family back home - his son, daughter, wife and parents - were waiting for money, excited that their boy had finally made it. But he was going to have to work for more than two years just to pay for the cost of getting here - and all to earn less than he did in Bangladesh.
He shows me his room. It is a tiny, poky, concrete cell with triple-decker bunk-beds, where he lives with 11 other men. All his belongings are piled onto his bunk: three shirts, a spare pair of trousers, and a cellphone. The room stinks, because the lavatories in the corner of the camp - holes in the ground - are backed up with excrement and clouds of black flies. There is no air conditioning or fans, so the heat is “unbearable. You cannot sleep. All you do is sweat and scratch all night.” At the height of summer, people sleep on the floor, on the roof, anywhere where they can pray for a moment of breeze.
The water delivered to the camp in huge white containers isn’t properly desalinated: it tastes of salt. “It makes us sick, but we have nothing else to drink,” he says.
The work is “the worst in the world,” he says. “You have to carry 50kg bricks and blocks of cement in the worst heat imaginable … This heat - it is like nothing else. You sweat so much you can’t pee, not for days or weeks. It’s like all the liquid comes out through your skin and you stink. You become dizzy and sick but you aren’t allowed to stop, except for an hour in the afternoon. You know if you drop anything or slip, you could die. If you take time off sick, your wages are docked, and you are trapped here even longer.”
He is currently working on the 67th floor of a shiny new tower, where he builds upwards, into the sky, into the heat. He doesn’t know its name. In his four years here, he has never seen the Dubai of tourist-fame, except as he constructs it floor-by-floor.
Is he angry? He is quiet for a long time. “Here, nobody shows their anger. You can’t. You get put in jail for a long time, then deported.” Last year, some workers went on strike after they were not given their wages for four months. The Dubai police surrounded their camps with razor-wire and water-cannons and blasted them out and back to work.
The “ringleaders” were imprisoned. I try a different question: does Sohinal regret coming? All the men look down, awkwardly. “How can we think about that? We are trapped. If we start to think about regrets…” He lets the sentence trail off. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence by adding: “I miss my country, my family and my land. We can grow food in Bangladesh. Here, nothing grows. Just oil and buildings.”
Since the recession hit, they say, the electricity has been cut off in dozens of the camps, and the men have not been paid for months. Their companies have disappeared with their passports and their pay. “We have been robbed of everything. Even if somehow we get back to Bangladesh, the loan sharks will demand we repay our loans immediately, and when we can’t, we’ll be sent to prison.”
This is all supposed to be illegal. Employers are meant to pay on time, never take your passport, give you breaks in the heat - but I met nobody who said it happens. Not one. These men are conned into coming and trapped into staying, with the complicity of the Dubai authorities.
Sahinal could well die out here. A British man who used to work on construction projects told me: “There’s a huge number of suicides in the camps and on the construction sites, but they’re not reported. They’re described as ‘accidents’.” Even then, their families aren’t free: they simply inherit the debts. A Human Rights Watch study found there is a “cover-up of the true extent” of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.
At night, in the dusk, I sit in the camp with Sohinal and his friends as they scrape together what they have left to buy a cheap bottle of spirits. They down it in one ferocious gulp. “It helps you to feel numb”, Sohinal says through a stinging throat. In the distance, the glistening Dubai skyline he built stands, oblivious.
IV. Mauled by the mall
I find myself stumbling in a daze from the camps into the sprawling marble malls that seem to stand on every street in Dubai. It is so hot there is no point building pavements; people gather in these cathedrals of consumerism to bask in the air conditioning. So within a ten minute taxi-ride, I have left Sohinal and I am standing in the middle of Harvey Nichols, being shown a £20,000 taffeta dress by a bored salesgirl. “As you can see, it is cut on the bias…” she says, and I stop writing.
Time doesn’t seem to pass in the malls. Days blur with the same electric light, the same shined floors, the same brands I know from home. Here, Dubai is reduced to its component sounds: do-buy. In the most expensive malls I am almost alone, the shops empty and echoing. On the record, everybody tells me business is going fine. Off the record, they look panicky. There is a hat exhibition ahead of the Dubai races, selling elaborate headgear for £1,000 a pop. “Last year, we were packed. Now look,” a hat designer tells me. She swoops her arm over a vacant space.
I approach a blonde 17-year-old Dutch girl wandering around in hotpants, oblivious to the swarms of men gaping at her. “I love it here!” she says. “The heat, the malls, the beach!” Does it ever bother you that it’s a slave society? She puts her head down, just as Sohinal did. “I try not to see,” she says. Even at 17, she has learned not to look, and not to ask; that, she senses, is a transgression too far.
Between the malls, there is nothing but the connecting tissue of asphalt. Every road has at least four lanes; Dubai feels like a motorway punctuated by shopping centres. You only walk anywhere if you are suicidal. The residents of Dubai flit from mall to mall by car or taxis.
How does it feel if this is your country, filled with foreigners? Unlike the expats and the slave class, I can’t just approach the native Emiratis to ask questions when I see them wandering around - the men in cool white robes, the women in sweltering black. If you try, the women blank you, and the men look affronted, and tell you brusquely that Dubai is “fine”. So I browse through the Emirati blog-scene and found some typical-sounding young Emiratis. We meet - where else? - in the mall.
Ahmed al-Atar is a handsome 23-year-old with a neat, trimmed beard, tailored white robes, and rectangular wire-glasses. He speaks perfect American-English, and quickly shows that he knows London, Los Angeles and Paris better than most westerners. Sitting back in his chair in an identikit Starbucks, he announces: “This is the best place in the world to be young! The government pays for your education up to PhD level. You get given a free house when you get married. You get free healthcare, and if it’s not good enough here, they pay for you to go abroad. You don’t even have to pay for your phone calls. Almost everyone has a maid, a nanny, and a driver. And we never pay any taxes. Don’t you wish you were Emirati?”
I try to raise potential objections to this Panglossian summary, but he leans forward and says: “Look - my grandfather woke up every day and he would have to fight to get to the well first to get water. When the wells ran dry, they had to have water delivered by camel. They were always hungry and thirsty and desperate for jobs. He limped all his life, because he there was no medical treatment available when he broke his leg. Now look at us!”
For Emiratis, this is a Santa Claus state, handing out goodies while it makes its money elsewhere: through renting out land to foreigners, soft taxes on them like business and airport charges, and the remaining dribble of oil. Most Emiratis, like Ahmed, work for the government, so they’re cushioned from the credit crunch. “I haven’t felt any effect at all, and nor have my friends,” he says. “Your employment is secure. You will only be fired if you do something incredibly bad.” The laws are currently being tightened, to make it even more impossible to sack an Emirati.
Sure, the flooding-in of expats can sometimes be “an eyesore”, Ahmed says. “But we see the expats as the price we had to pay for this development. How else could we do it? Nobody wants to go back to the days of the desert, the days before everyone came. We went from being like an African country to having an average income per head of $120,000 a year. And we’re supposed to complain?”
He says the lack of political freedom is fine by him. “You’ll find it very hard to find an Emirati who doesn’t support Sheikh Mohammed.” Because they’re scared? “No, because we really all support him. He’s a great leader. Just look!” He smiles and says: “I’m sure my life is very much like yours. We hang out, have a coffee, go to the movies. You’ll be in a Pizza Hut or Nando’s in London, and at the same time I’ll be in one in Dubai,” he says, ordering another latte.
But do all young Emiratis see it this way? Can it really be so sunny in the political sands? In the sleek Emirates Tower Hotel, I meet Sultan al-Qassemi. He’s a 31-year-old Emirati columnist for the Dubai press and private art collector, with a reputation for being a contrarian liberal, advocating gradual reform. He is wearing Western clothes - blue jeans and a Ralph Lauren shirt - and speaks incredibly fast, turning himself into a manic whirr of arguments.
“People here are turning into lazy, overweight babies!” he exclaims. “The nanny state has gone too far. We don’t do anything for ourselves! Why don’t any of us work for the private sector? Why can’t a mother and father look after their own child?” And yet, when I try to bring up the system of slavery that built Dubai, he looks angry. “People should give us credit,” he insists. “We are the most tolerant people in the world. Dubai is the only truly international city in the world. Everyone who comes here is treated with respect.”
I pause, and think of the vast camps in Sonapur, just a few miles away. Does he even know they exist? He looks irritated. “You know, if there are 30 or 40 cases [of worker abuse] a year, that sounds like a lot but when you think about how many people are here…” Thirty or 40? This abuse is endemic to the system, I say. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands.
Sultan is furious. He splutters: “You don’t think Mexicans are treated badly in New York City? And how long did it take Britain to treat people well? I could come to London and write about the homeless people on Oxford Street and make your city sound like a terrible place, too! The workers here can leave any time they want! Any Indian can leave, any Asian can leave!”
But they can’t, I point out. Their passports are taken away, and their wages are withheld. “Well, I feel bad if that happens, and anybody who does that should be punished. But their embassies should help them.” They try. But why do you forbid the workers - with force - from going on strike against lousy employers? “Thank God we don’t allow that!” he exclaims. “Strikes are in-convenient! They go on the street - we’re not having that. We won’t be like France. Imagine a country where they the workers can just stop whenever they want!” So what should the workers do when they are cheated and lied to? “Quit. Leave the country.”
I sigh. Sultan is seething now. “People in the West are always complaining about us,” he says. Suddenly, he adopts a mock-whiny voice and says, in imitation of these disgusting critics: “Why don’t you treat animals better? Why don’t you have better shampoo advertising? Why don’t you treat labourers better?” It’s a revealing order: animals, shampoo, then workers. He becomes more heated, shifting in his seat, jabbing his finger at me. “I gave workers who worked for me safety goggles and special boots, and they didn’t want to wear them! It slows them down!”
And then he smiles, coming up with what he sees as his killer argument. “When I see Western journalists criticise us - don’t you realise you’re shooting yourself in the foot? The Middle East will be far more dangerous if Dubai fails. Our export isn’t oil, it’s hope. Poor Egyptians or Libyans or Iranians grow up saying - I want to go to Dubai. We’re very important to the region. We are showing how to be a modern Muslim country. We don’t have any fundamentalists here. Europeans shouldn’t gloat at our demise. You should be very worried…. Do you know what will happen if this model fails? Dubai will go down the Iranian path, the Islamist path.“
Sultan sits back. My arguments have clearly disturbed him; he says in a softer, conciliatory tone, almost pleading: “Listen. My mother used to go to the well and get a bucket of water every morning. On her wedding day, she was given an orange as a gift because she had never eaten one. Two of my brothers died when they were babies because the healthcare system hadn’t developed yet. Don’t judge us.” He says it again, his eyes filled with intensity: “Don’t judge us.”
V. The Dunkin’ Donuts Dissidents
But there is another face to the Emirati minority - a small huddle of dissidents, trying to shake the Sheikhs out of abusive laws. Next to a Virgin Megastore and a Dunkin’ Donuts, with James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” blaring behind me, I meet the Dubai dictatorship’s Public Enemy Number One. By way of introduction, Mohammed al-Mansoori says from within his white robes and sinewy face: “Westerners come her and see the malls and the tall buildings and they think that means we are free. But these businesses, these buildings - who are they for? This is a dictatorship. The royal family think they own the country, and the people are their servants. There is no freedom here.“
We snuffle out the only Arabic restaurant in this mall, and he says everything you are banned - under threat of prison - from saying in Dubai. Mohammed tells me he was born in Dubai to a fisherman father who taught him one enduring lesson: Never follow the herd. Think for yourself. In the sudden surge of development, Mohammed trained as a lawyer. By the Noughties, he had climbed to the head of the Jurists’ Association, an organisation set up to press for Dubai’s laws to be consistent with international human rights legislation.
And then - suddenly - Mohammed thwacked into the limits of Sheikh Mohammed’s tolerance. Horrified by the “system of slavery” his country was being built on, he spoke out to Human Rights Watch and the BBC. “So I was hauled in by the secret police and told: shut up, or you will lose you job, and your children will be unemployable,” he says. “But how could I be silent?”
He was stripped of his lawyer’s licence and his passport - becoming yet another person imprisoned in this country. “I have been blacklisted and so have my children. The newspapers are not allowed to write about me.”
Why is the state so keen to defend this system of slavery? He offers a prosaic explanation. “Most companies are owned by the government, so they oppose human rights laws because it will reduce their profit margins. It’s in their interests that the workers are slaves.”
Last time there was a depression, there was a starbust of democracy in Dubai, seized by force from the sheikhs. In the 1930s, the city’s merchants banded together against Sheikh Said bin Maktum al-Maktum - the absolute ruler of his day - and insisted they be given control over the state finances. It lasted only a few years, before the Sheikh - with the enthusiastic support of the British - snuffed them out.
And today? Sheikh Mohammed turned Dubai into Creditopolis, a city built entirely on debt. Dubai owes 107 percent of its entire GDP. It would be bust already, if the neighbouring oil-soaked state of Abu Dhabi hadn’t pulled out its chequebook. Mohammed says this will constrict freedom even further. “Now Abu Dhabi calls the tunes - and they are much more conservative and restrictive than even Dubai. Freedom here will diminish every day.” Already, new media laws have been drafted forbidding the press to report on anything that could “damage” Dubai or “its economy”. Is this why the newspapers are giving away glossy supplements talking about “encouraging economic indicators”?
Everybody here waves Islamism as the threat somewhere over the horizon, sure to swell if their advice is not followed. Today, every imam is appointed by the government, and every sermon is tightly controlled to keep it moderate. But Mohammed says anxiously: “We don’t have Islamism here now, but I think that if you control people and give them no way to express anger, it could rise. People who are told to shut up all the time can just explode.”
Later that day, against another identikit-corporate backdrop, I meet another dissident - Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, Professor of Political Science at Emirates University. His anger focuses not on political reform, but the erosion of Emirati identity. He is famous among the locals, a rare outspoken conductor for their anger. He says somberly: “There has been a rupture here. This is a totally different city to the one I was born in 50 years ago.”
He looks around at the shiny floors and Western tourists and says: “What we see now didn’t occur in our wildest dreams. We never thought we could be such a success, a trendsetter, a model for other Arab countries. The people of Dubai are mighty proud of their city, and rightly so. And yet…” He shakes his head. “In our hearts, we fear we have built a modern city but we are losing it to all these expats.”
Adbulkhaleq says every Emirati of his generation lives with a “psychological trauma.” Their hearts are divided - “between pride on one side, and fear on the other.” Just after he says this, a smiling waitress approaches, and asks us what we would like to drink. He orders a Coke.
VI. Dubai Pride
There is one group in Dubai for whom the rhetoric of sudden freedom and liberation rings true - but it is the very group the government wanted to liberate least: gays.
Beneath a famous international hotel, I clamber down into possibly the only gay club on the Saudi Arabian peninsula. I find a United Nations of tank-tops and bulging biceps, dancing to Kylie, dropping ecstasy, and partying like it’s Soho. “Dubai is the best place in the Muslim world for gays!” a 25-year old Emirati with spiked hair says, his arms wrapped around his 31-year old “husband”. “We are alive. We can meet. That is more than most Arab gays.”
It is illegal to be gay in Dubai, and punishable by 10 years in prison. But the locations of the latest unofficial gay clubs circulate online, and men flock there, seemingly unafraid of the police. “They might bust the club, but they will just disperse us,” one of them says. “The police have other things to do.”
In every large city, gay people find a way to find each other - but Dubai has become the clearing-house for the region’s homosexuals, a place where they can live in relative safety. Saleh, a lean private in the Saudi Arabian army, has come here for the Coldplay concert, and tells me Dubai is “great” for gays: “In Saudi, it’s hard to be straight when you’re young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex. But they only want to have sex with boys - 15- to 21-year-olds. I’m 27, so I’m too old now. I need to find real gays, so this is the best place. All Arab gays want to live in Dubai.”
With that, Saleh dances off across the dancefloor, towards a Dutch guy with big biceps and a big smile.
VII. The Lifestyle
All the guidebooks call Dubai a “melting pot”, but as I trawl across the city, I find that every group here huddles together in its own little ethnic enclave - and becomes a caricature of itself. One night - in the heart of this homesick city, tired of the malls and the camps - I go to Double Decker, a hang-out for British expats. At the entrance there is a red telephone box, and London bus-stop signs. Its wooden interior looks like a cross between a colonial clubhouse in the Raj and an Eighties school disco, with blinking coloured lights and cheese blaring out. As I enter, a girl in a short skirt collapses out of the door onto her back. A guy wearing a pirate hat helps her to her feet, dropping his beer bottle with a paralytic laugh.
I start to talk to two sun-dried women in their sixties who have been getting gently sozzled since midday. “You stay here for The Lifestyle,” they say, telling me to take a seat and order some more drinks. All the expats talk about The Lifestyle, but when you ask what it is, they become vague. Ann Wark tries to summarise it: “Here, you go out every night. You’d never do that back home. You see people all the time. It’s great. You have lots of free time. You have maids and staff so you don’t have to do all that stuff. You party!”
They have been in Dubai for 20 years, and they are happy to explain how the city works. “You’ve got a hierarchy, haven’t you?” Ann says. “It’s the Emiratis at the top, then I’d say the British and other Westerners. Then I suppose it’s the Filipinos, because they’ve got a bit more brains than the Indians. Then at the bottom you’ve got the Indians and all them lot.”
They admit, however, they have “never” spoken to an Emirati. Never? “No. They keep themselves to themselves.” Yet Dubai has disappointed them. Jules Taylor tells me: “If you have an accident here it’s a nightmare. There was a British woman we knew who ran over an Indian guy, and she was locked up for four days! If you have a tiny bit of alcohol on your breath they’re all over you. These Indians throw themselves in front of cars, because then their family has to be given blood money - you know, compensation. But the police just blame us. That poor woman.”
A 24-year-old British woman called Hannah Gamble takes a break from the dancefloor to talk to me. “I love the sun and the beach! It’s great out here!” she says. Is there anything bad? “Oh yes!” she says. Ah: one of them has noticed, I think with relief. “The banks! When you want to make a transfer you have to fax them. You can’t do it online.” Anything else? She thinks hard. “The traffic’s not very good.”
When I ask the British expats how they feel to not be in a democracy, their reaction is always the same. First, they look bemused. Then they look affronted. “It’s the Arab way!” an Essex boy shouts at me in response, as he tries to put a pair of comedy antlers on his head while pouring some beer into the mouth of his friend, who is lying on his back on the floor, gurning.
Later, in a hotel bar, I start chatting to a dyspeptic expat American who works in the cosmetics industry and is desperate to get away from these people. She says: “All the people who couldn’t succeed in their own countries end up here, and suddenly they’re rich and promoted way above their abilities and bragging about how great they are. I’ve never met so many incompetent people in such senior positions anywhere in the world.” She adds: “It’s absolutely racist. I had Filipino girls working for me doing the same job as a European girl, and she’s paid a quarter of the wages. The people who do the real work are paid next to nothing, while these incompetent managers pay themselves £40,000 a month.“
With the exception of her, one theme unites every expat I speak to: their joy at having staff to do the work that would clog their lives up Back Home. Everyone, it seems, has a maid. The maids used to be predominantly Filipino, but with the recession, Filipinos have been judged to be too expensive, so a nice Ethiopian servant girl is the latest fashionable accessory.
It is an open secret that once you hire a maid, you have absolute power over her. You take her passport - everyone does; you decide when to pay her, and when - if ever - she can take a break; and you decide who she talks to. She speaks no Arabic. She cannot escape.
In a Burger King, a Filipino girl tells me it is “terrifying” for her to wander the malls in Dubai because Filipino maids or nannies always sneak away from the family they are with and beg her for help. “They say - ‘Please, I am being held prisoner, they don’t let me call home, they make me work every waking hour seven days a week.’ At first I would say - my God, I will tell the consulate, where are you staying? But they never know their address, and the consulate isn’t interested. I avoid them now. I keep thinking about a woman who told me she hadn’t eaten any fruit in four years. They think I have power because I can walk around on my own, but I’m powerless.”
The only hostel for women in Dubai - a filthy private villa on the brink of being repossessed - is filled with escaped maids. Mela Matari, a 25-year-old Ethiopian woman with a drooping smile, tells me what happened to her - and thousands like her. She was promised a paradise in the sands by an agency, so she left her four year-old daughter at home and headed here to earn money for a better future. “But they paid me half what they promised. I was put with an Australian family - four children - and Madam made me work from 6am to 1am every day, with no day off. I was exhausted and pleaded for a break, but they just shouted: ‘You came here to work, not sleep!’ Then one day I just couldn’t go on, and Madam beat me. She beat me with her fists and kicked me. My ear still hurts. They wouldn’t give me my wages: they said they’d pay me at the end of the two years. What could I do? I didn’t know anybody here. I was terrified.”
One day, after yet another beating, Mela ran out onto the streets, and asked - in broken English - how to find the Ethiopian consulate. After walking for two days, she found it, but they told her she had to get her passport back from Madam. “Well, how could I?” she asks. She has been in this hostel for six months. She has spoken to her daughter twice. “I lost my country, I lost my daughter, I lost everything,” she says.
As she says this, I remember a stray sentence I heard back at Double Decker. I asked a British woman called Hermione Frayling what the best thing about Dubai was. “Oh, the servant class!” she trilled. “You do nothing. They’ll do anything!”
VIII. The End of The World
The World is empty. It has been abandoned, its continents unfinished. Through binoculars, I think I can glimpse Britain; this sceptred isle barren in the salt-breeze.
Here, off the coast of Dubai, developers have been rebuilding the world. They have constructed artificial islands in the shape of all planet Earth’s land masses, and they plan to sell each continent off to be built on. There were rumours that the Beckhams would bid for Britain. But the people who work at the nearby coast say they haven’t seen anybody there for months now. “The World is over,” a South African suggests.
All over Dubai, crazy projects that were Under Construction are now Under Collapse. They were building an air-conditioned beach here, with cooling pipes running below the sand, so the super-rich didn’t singe their toes on their way from towel to sea.
The projects completed just before the global economy crashed look empty and tattered. The Atlantis Hotel was launched last winter in a $20m fin-de-siecle party attended by Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan and Lily Allen. Sitting on its own fake island - shaped, of course, like a palm tree - it looks like an immense upturned tooth in a faintly decaying mouth. It is pink and turreted - the architecture of the pharaohs, as reimagined by Zsa-Zsa Gabor. Its Grand Lobby is a monumental dome covered in glitterballs, held up by eight monumental concrete palm trees. Standing in the middle, there is a giant shining glass structure that looks like the intestines of every guest who has ever stayed at the Atlantis. It is unexpectedly raining; water is leaking from the roof, and tiles are falling off.
A South African PR girl shows me around its most coveted rooms, explaining that this is “the greatest luxury offered in the world”. We stroll past shops selling £24m diamond rings around a hotel themed on the lost and sunken continent of, yes, Atlantis. There are huge water tanks filled with sharks, which poke around mock-abandoned castles and dumped submarines. There are more than 1,500 rooms here, each with a sea view. The Neptune suite has three floors, and - I gasp as I see it - it looks out directly on to the vast shark tank. You lie on the bed, and the sharks stare in at you. In Dubai, you can sleep with the fishes, and survive.
But even the luxury - reminiscent of a Bond villain’s lair - is also being abandoned. I check myself in for a few nights to the classiest hotel in town, the Park Hyatt. It is the fashionistas’ favourite hotel, where Elle Macpherson and Tommy Hilfiger stay, a gorgeous, understated palace. It feels empty. Whenever I eat, I am one of the only people in the restaurant. A staff member tells me in a whisper: “It used to be full here. Now there’s hardly anyone.” Rattling around, I feel like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, the last man in an abandoned, haunted home.
The most famous hotel in Dubai - the proud icon of the city - is the Burj al Arab hotel, sitting on the shore, shaped like a giant glass sailing boat. In the lobby, I start chatting to a couple from London who work in the City. They have been coming to Dubai for 10 years now, and they say they love it. “You never know what you’ll find here,” he says. “On our last trip, at the beginning of the holiday, our window looked out on the sea. By the end, they’d built an entire island there.”
My patience frayed by all this excess, I find myself snapping: doesn’t the omnipresent slave class bother you? I hope they misunderstood me, because the woman replied: “That’s what we come for! It’s great, you can’t do anything for yourself!” Her husband chimes in: “When you go to the toilet, they open the door, they turn on the tap - the only thing they don’t do is take it out for you when you have a piss!” And they both fall about laughing.
IX. Taking on the Desert
Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; it is living beyond its ecological means. You stand on a manicured Dubai lawn and watch the sprinklers spray water all around you. You see tourists flocking to swim with dolphins. You wander into a mountain-sized freezer where they have built a ski slope with real snow. And a voice at the back of your head squeaks: this is the desert. This is the most water-stressed place on the planet. How can this be happening? How is it possible?
The very earth is trying to repel Dubai, to dry it up and blow it away. The new Tiger Woods Gold Course needs four million gallons of water to be pumped on to its grounds every day, or it would simply shrivel and disappear on the winds. The city is regularly washed over with dust-storms that fog up the skies and turn the skyline into a blur. When the dust parts, heat burns through. It cooks anything that is not kept constantly, artificially wet.
Dr Mohammed Raouf, the environmental director of the Gulf Research Centre, sounds sombre as he sits in his Dubai office and warns: “This is a desert area, and we are trying to defy its environment. It is very unwise. If you take on the desert, you will lose.”
Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city in a place with no useable water. None. There is no surface water, very little acquifer, and among the lowest rainfall in the world. So Dubai drinks the sea. The Emirates’ water is stripped of salt in vast desalination plants around the Gulf - making it the most expensive water on earth. It costs more than petrol to produce, and belches vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it goes. It’s the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the biggest average carbon footprint of any human being - more than double that of an American.
If a recession turns into depression, Dr Raouf believes Dubai could run out of water. “At the moment, we have financial reserves that cover bringing so much water to the middle of the desert. But if we had lower revenues - if, say, the world shifts to a source of energy other than oil…” he shakes his head. “We will have a very big problem. Water is the main source of life. It would be a catastrophe. Dubai only has enough water to last us a week. There’s almost no storage. We don’t know what will happen if our supplies falter. It would be hard to survive.”
Global warming, he adds, makes the problem even worse. “We are building all these artificial islands, but if the sea level rises, they will be gone, and we will lose a lot. Developers keep saying it’s all fine, they’ve taken it into consideration, but I’m not so sure.”
Is the Dubai government concerned about any of this? “There isn’t much interest in these problems,” he says sadly. But just to stand still, the average resident of Dubai needs three times more water than the average human. In the looming century of water stresses and a transition away from fossil fuels, Dubai is uniquely vulnerable.
I wanted to understand how the government of Dubai will react, so I decided to look at how it has dealt with an environmental problem that already exists - the pollution of its beaches. One woman - an American, working at one of the big hotels - had written in a lot of online forums arguing that it was bad and getting worse, so I called her to arrange a meeting. “I can’t talk to you,” she said sternly. Not even if it’s off the record? “I can’t talk to you.” But I don’t have to disclose your name… “You’re not listening. This phone is bugged. I can’t talk to you,” she snapped, and hung up.
The next day I turned up at her office. “If you reveal my identity, I’ll be sent on the first plane out of this city,” she said, before beginning to nervously pace the shore with me. “It started like this. We began to get complaints from people using the beach. The water looked and smelled odd, and they were starting to get sick after going into it. So I wrote to the ministers of health and tourism and expected to hear back immediately - but there was nothing. Silence. I hand-delivered the letters. Still nothing.”
The water quality got worse and worse. The guests started to spot raw sewage, condoms, and used sanitary towels floating in the sea. So the hotel ordered its own water analyses from a professional company. “They told us it was full of fecal matter and bacteria ‘too numerous to count’. I had to start telling guests not to go in the water, and since they’d come on a beach holiday, as you can imagine, they were pretty pissed off.” She began to make angry posts on the expat discussion forums - and people began to figure out what was happening. Dubai had expanded so fast its sewage treatment facilities couldn’t keep up. The sewage disposal trucks had to queue for three or four days at the treatment plants - so instead, they were simply drilling open the manholes and dumping the untreated sewage down them, so it flowed straight to the sea.
Suddenly, it was an open secret - and the municipal authorities finally acknowledged the problem. They said they would fine the truckers. But the water quality didn’t improve: it became black and stank. “It’s got chemicals in it. I don’t know what they are. But this stuff is toxic.”
She continued to complain - and started to receive anonymous phone calls. “Stop embarassing Dubai, or your visa will be cancelled and you’re out,” they said. She says: “The expats are terrified to talk about anything. One critical comment in the newspapers and they deport you. So what am I supposed to do? Now the water is worse than ever. People are getting really sick. Eye infections, ear infections, stomach infections, rashes. Look at it!” There is faeces floating on the beach, in the shadow of one of Dubai’s most famous hotels.
“What I learnt about Dubai is that the authorities don’t give a toss about the environment,” she says, standing in the stench. “They’re pumping toxins into the sea, their main tourist attraction, for God’s sake. If there are environmental problems in the future, I can tell you now how they will deal with them - deny it’s happening, cover it up, and carry on until it’s a total disaster.” As she speaks, a dust-storm blows around us, as the desert tries, slowly, insistently, to take back its land.
X. Fake Plastic Trees
On my final night in the Dubai Disneyland, I stop off on my way to the airport, at a Pizza Hut that sits at the side of one of the city’s endless, wide, gaping roads. It is identical to the one near my apartment in London in every respect, even the vomit-coloured decor. My mind is whirring and distracted. Perhaps Dubai disturbed me so much, I am thinking, because here, the entire global supply chain is condensed. Many of my goods are made by semi-enslaved populations desperate for a chance 2,000 miles away; is the only difference that here, they are merely two miles away, and you sometimes get to glimpse their faces? Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in One City.
I ask the Filipino girl behind the counter if she likes it here. “It’s OK,” she says cautiously. Really? I say. I can’t stand it. She sighs with relief and says: “This is the most terrible place! I hate it! I was here for months before I realised - everything in Dubai is fake. Everything you see. The trees are fake, the workers’ contracts are fake, the islands are fake, the smiles are fake - even the water is fake!” But she is trapped, she says. She got into debt to come here, and she is stuck for three years: an old story now. “I think Dubai is like an oasis. It is an illusion, not real. You think you have seen water in the distance, but you get close and you only get a mouthful of sand.”
As she says this, another customer enters. She forces her face into the broad, empty Dubai smile and says: “And how may I help you tonight, sir?”
6 Responses to “The dark side of Dubai”
indw says:
Johann, great work, having lived in Dubai for 1 years i wanted to write all that was wrong with the city, which you have managed to cover brilliantly.
One point you missed was that even the Filipino girls that you spoke to live in shared accommodation, worse that a prison dorm.
Did you ask anyone about the bed bug problem?
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:56 pm
TRUTH UNTOLD says:
The sad stories here are just a glimpse and fraction of the world outside of Dubai .. The writer and not journalist has given a one sided story and glamourized the evil which exists the world over .. Dubai may have some of what is exagerated about above .. But U name me one country that doesn't ! .. Good luck to all ..
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:03 pm
John Smith says:
If it were not so hillarious it hurts it were al it would be really sad. How lucky are the ones who know Dubai better - especially also where it is (surprise: it does not ly inside Saudi Arabia).
I - being an expat - agree to about 10% which is really sad. All the rest is taken from previous articles and multiplied by 10 by - to be assumed - a person who never spent more than a fortnight here. Shame.
My advice to such devastated expats is - inform yourself about the rules and laws here before and don't live in a dream world. Nothing like this has to happen to one with some common sense. Same applies for Maids and Labourers. There are offices to take on their complaints. And act upon it.
p.s. the fake palm trees are mobile phone masts as found all over the world nowadays - tank god not as ugly as the masts they used before.
April 23rd, 2009 at 4:04 am
Dubai - Res says:
Hi , First of all you dont know anything about dubai , and you are just pullshitting people in your opinions . Dubai is not place for slaves as you mean they come here and we paid them a alot and in their country they dont have place to lay down their head . Most of forigners comes to Dubai , Why ??? because its a dark city because its open it hande to all people around the world to work here when their countries dont have jobs for them .. so stop talking like that about dubai and If you are in UAE go out that is it go to your country !!! your country is the best for you …enough
April 23rd, 2009 at 4:07 am
Saeed says:
This article is so dead on and every part of it is the truth about Dubai. It takes a lot of guts to write such article. There is one area that could have been added and that is the high turnover of expats in the workforce specially Americans. The reason is very simple unlike the Europeans we ask the question "Why?" and since "Because!" is not considered a reasonable answer, we are simply pushed out. Fortunately they can not screw with us the same way as the 3rd world nations and we are left to get frustrated enough to leave!
April 23rd, 2009 at 4:09 am
British in Dubai, three years says:
I just want to say that this piece is absolutely spot on, and thank goodness for freedom of the press, which is something we cannot enjoy in Dubai. All of us here have so many horror stories that we can only discuss between ourselves…the construction workers begging for water on the roadside, unemployed waiters sleeping under the trees, the maid thrown from the balcony for refusing to have sex, the man arrested for kissing his girlfriend in the Starbucks, the man arrested who had all his possessions from his car stolen by the police.
If I read about another programme or conference or scheme to deal with human human trafficking in the UAE, i think i am going to be sick. If you come to work here you have zero rights and you can easily land yourself in jail if you can't maintain your debts. Caveat Emptor. This John Smith posting here is a fake, or it is someone that doesn't know Dubai. There are no 'offices' here to take on your complaints. He should try going to visit the Labour Department.
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:10
Friday, April 24, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Despite the Risks, Filipino Seafarers Toil in the World’s Oceans
MOST OF THE 2,100 passengers of the luxury cruise ship SS Norway were probably still asleep when it docked in Miami in the wee hours of the morning of May 25, after a week-long cruise in the Caribbean.
But Ricardo Rosal, newly promoted as the famed cruise ship’s third engineer, was already at work, along with the rest of the crew. The first Filipino to be elevated to that rank in the Norway, Rosal, 51, had toiled for years as one of the ship’s boiler-room stokers. His rise in rank had meant a salary that was almost twice his $500-monthly wage.
Rosal was with the stokers when the boiler suddenly exploded that morning, waking many of the passengers. He and three other crew members were killed instantly, their bodies charred by the violent rush of high-pressure, superheated steam. No passenger was hurt, but several other crew members were seriously injured, with four more dying days later.
Today, almost two months later, Rosal’s wife, Maria Gracia, has yet to accept the fact that the father of her three children is dead. But seasoned seafarers just grit their teeth, knowing that the shipping industry is among the most dangerous in the world.
Despite a safety-conscious regime instituted over the years by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), maritime disasters such as that of SS Norway’s boiler room explosion continue to happen. The Philippines is the world’s top supplier of seafarers and one in every five seamen onboard international ocean-going vessels is Filipino. For this reason, the chances of having Filipinos among the casualties in any major maritime disaster are high.
In the SS Norway explosion, which is regarded as the most fatal cruise-ship accident in the United States in over a decade, seven of the eight who died were Filipinos, as were 14 of the injured, most of them suffering from burns.
Last month, four Filipino mariners also lost their lives in an explosion aboard the Maltese-flagged tanker Efxinos, off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, while two others were injured.
Yet such tragedies have not daunted Filipino seafarers, who are eager to work overseas. The domestic shipping industry certainly cannot absorb them, and it pays far lower than what they can earn abroad. The government is also encouraging the brawn drain, not least because seafarers remit back to the Philippines some $1 billion every year.
Unfortunately, Filipinos are losing their competitiveness in today’s demand-driven global labor market. In the last few years, international ships have begun recruiting more seafarers from China and Eastern Europe. According to industry insiders, these mariners are relatively at par with Filipinos in terms of skills, but accept lower wages.
“We’re just one of the many labor-supplying countries,” says Ramon Tionloc Jr. a center director at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA). “In the 1980s, we used to experience double-digit growth rates in the deployment of sea-based workers. It has shrunk since then. We need to sustain our growth considering that the Chinese have been very strong in the last two years.”
Long before the advent of the country’s overseas labor program, ships sailing international waters already had Filipino seafarers onboard. Between 1975 and 1999, the seafaring work force increased eight times, credited largely to manning agencies that were able to market the skills of Filipino mariners.
There are some 500,000 registered Filipino seafarers but only 200,000 of them can find work onboard international ocean-going vessels at any one time. The growth in seafarer deployment has also plummeted in the last two years. Some studies say this could be an indication that the Philippine ship-manning industry may have already reached a plateau.
Most industry insiders agree that the government has been hard at work trying to stave off the decline. In the process, however, local seafarers are being asked to trade off some benefits so they would remain globally competitive.
The most recent POEA standard employment contract for seafarers onboard ocean-going vessels, which covers those deployed from June 2002 onwards, is seen by some seafarer groups as a sellout. Lawyer Edwin dela Cruz, president of the International Seafarers Action Center (ISAC), says the contract only shows that the government regards seafarers as a commodity “whose entitlements need to be diminished so they can be marketable.”
Under the old contract, deaths or injuries need only to occur during the seafarer’s employment, which begins at the time of his or her departure from the airport or seaport in the point of hire and ends upon his or her return to the said port when the contract ends. As long as this was the case, few employers would even bother to ask about the circumstances of deaths or injuries. Claim payments were automatically remitted in two to three months.
Today the burden of proving that a death or injury is work related has been shifted to seafarers, who are at a disadvantage as they and their families do not have access to documents to prove their claims. Giehrjem Puracan, a lawyer pursuing seafarers’ claims, says, “The records are, in most cases, in the hands of the ship owners.”
The shift, others say, comes even as the shipping industry remains fraught with health and safety risks. Medical studies show evidence of an increased risk of mortality among seafarers, with ordinary crew members having higher mortality than officers.
The Research Unit of Maritime Medicine in Denmark, for instance, says the risk of cancer is high. Among those working in the engine room, the hazards include the presence of asbestos, mineral oils, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, organic solvents and exhaust gases. Crews on tankers are also exposed to airborne carcinogens like benzene and organic solvents that affect the nervous system. Other research, meanwhile, suggests an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases among seafarers.
From November 1998 to 2001, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF)-Philippines recorded 367 casualties among Filipino seafarers, 66 percent of whom fell ill or met accidents, with 34 percent dying as a result of sunk ships, explosions and other mishaps. By the time it closed its Manila office in 2002, cases had almost doubled.
Since last September, the newly formed ISAC has received 140 seafarers’ complaints, half of which concern deaths, sicknesses and injuries.
But because of the POEA contract’s “work-related” clause as applied to claiming benefits for deaths, illnesses and injuries, dela Cruz says the claims process has become more litigious, allowing employers to question how the seafarers’ misfortunes are related to their work. He remarks, “It’s become a lawyer’s paradise.”
Puracan, for his part, says that beginning this year, the tack of manning agencies, which supply ships with crew, has been to argue the non-work-related circumstances surrounding the death, sickness or injury of seafarers.
This time, too, when the seafarers’ claims get approved at the arbiter level of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC), employers are no longer as ready to offer a settlement, but are more inclined to bring the cases up to the Commission level, and even all the way to the Court of Appeals.
According to the POEA, though, what manning agencies are actually contesting are accident-related deaths and injuries resulting from illnesses, particularly pre-existing conditions that seafarers knowingly conceal. This is also a new feature of the POEA contract, and one that could not only disqualify seafarers from any compensation and benefits, but can even be a valid ground for termination.
“They are asking why they should be made liable for, say a cancer or diabetes case, which cannot happen in a month after a crew member goes on board,” says Tionloc who notes the prevalence in the past of sickness and disability cases entertained by the P&I (Protection and Indemnity) clubs that facilitate payments of claims from ship owners.
Ship engineer Nelson Ramirez, who is also president of the United Filipino Seafarers (UFS), says the legitimate claims far outnumber those that are not. But he also admits that there are cases filed by “professional complainants” dictated upon by “ambulance chasers.”
“There are really those who take advantage,” says Ramirez. “You choke while eating on the ship — is that work-related?”
“Any death, any injury is unfortunate,” says Doris Magsaysay-Ho, chief executive officer of the Magsaysay Maritime Corporation, one of the country’s largest manning agencies. “But it has to be accident-related. Yet what we have is a lot of deaths that comes from sickness. So how can you now be sure that a case is an accident-related or a health-related injury or death if somebody died of heart attack?”
That would have been the function of medical examinations, if administered strictly and extensively. Magsaysay-Ho concedes, however, that not every manning agency adopts these because some of the tests are very expensive. Some of the agencies therefore resort only to basic health examinations that are unable to detect pre-existing illnesses.
So, Capt. Rolando Cervantes asks, why penalize the seafarers who submit dutifully to any examination conducted by company-designated physicians? Cervantes argues further that the same doctors would not allow them to board a ship if they are medically unfit.
If Cervantes sounds bitter, it may be because he has yet to receive a sickness allowance after being diagnosed with hypertension and sent home in April. Under the POEA contract, hypertension is compensated only if it impairs the functions of major body organs. The 48-year-old grumbles, “It seems I have to either get well first or become disabled before I get anything.”
The casualties in the SS Norway tragedy did not face such disputes. The injured Filipino crew who came from Magsaysay were covered by a collective bargaining agreement, entitling them to benefits of as much as $60,000.
Under the POEA contract, however, death benefits are pegged at $50,000 plus $7,000 for each minor child, not exceeding four in total. But the Filipino seafarers who were killed on the SS Norway are entitled to more. The six fatalities from the manning agency C.F. Sharp Crew Management were also covered by a collective agreement of the ITF, ensuring $60,000 for each family, plus $15,000 for each dependent not older than 21 years but not exceeding four per family.
The Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL), which operates SS Norway, was also willing to give each family $3,000 as funeral and burial allowance, instead of the $1,000 stipulated in the POEA contract, says C.F. Sharp assistant manager Aurita Milanco. The manning agency, however, decided to stick to just the regular burial allowance. This, says Milanco, was to avoid legal complications after a U.S. lawyer filed damage claims of over $10 billion in compensation against NCL in Miami, Florida, on behalf of the accident’s survivors and the families of those who died.
Another controversial amendment in the POEA contract says that once seafarers or their families claim death and disability benefits, they can no longer file damages for negligence or tort cases against a foreign ship. Seen by some as another concession to the ship owners, the stipulation runs contrary to the International Labor Organization (ILO)’s model receipt and release form for contractual claims which provides for the right of seafarers’ legal heirs or dependents to pursue tort and damage claims.
And while the stipulated compensation are very generous by local standards, they pale in comparison to those enjoyed by seafarers employed in, say, German vessels, who can get as much as $125,000 (crew members) and $250,000 (officers) in death benefits. Lawyer Puracan also argues, “Why limit the value of human life to only $50,000? If at all, shouldn’t the government be the first to allow workers more opportunities to improve their lot?”
Magsaysay-Ho, though, says, “While we can’t put a cap on human life, unfortunately, there’s no magic number that says a life is worth this much. There’s none. That’s not the way it works. There has to be a sort of cap on an employers’ liability or else people will be scared to hire us.”
“When there’s merit for payment suffering, the owner is willing to offer it so that the families can start anew,” she adds. “It’s a matter of discussing it. When it’s discussed directly there are no commissions by anybody. There are no legal fees.”
UFS’s Ramirez also warns against “ambulance chasers,” or lawyers who dangle the prospects of huge sums of money in awards before their distressed clients. Says Ramirez: “More often than not, they just make the seamen hope in vain.”
Last October, the SS Norway lost a case filed by a Polish engine repairman who suffered a back injury for working on the ship’s leaking sprinkler pipes 20 hours a day for a week. He was awarded $705,000 by a Miami-Dade county jury, which also found the cruise ship unseaworthy.
At least two other cases involved local seafarers. In February 1997, cabin steward Wilfredo Delfin of the cruise ship Royal Odyssey (now the Norwegian Star) apparently died by drowning. But NCL officials reported his death as suicide, and withheld his death benefits. Delfin’s heirs sued and won $120,000 in damages.
The NCL was also sued for its alleged failure to provide for the medical treatment of a bar waitress who suffered psychotic disorder while on board the Norwegian Crown. A $10,000-claim for partial disability has been awarded at the arbiter level. It is on appeal at the NLRC. - ALECKS P. PABICO, PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
But Ricardo Rosal, newly promoted as the famed cruise ship’s third engineer, was already at work, along with the rest of the crew. The first Filipino to be elevated to that rank in the Norway, Rosal, 51, had toiled for years as one of the ship’s boiler-room stokers. His rise in rank had meant a salary that was almost twice his $500-monthly wage.
Rosal was with the stokers when the boiler suddenly exploded that morning, waking many of the passengers. He and three other crew members were killed instantly, their bodies charred by the violent rush of high-pressure, superheated steam. No passenger was hurt, but several other crew members were seriously injured, with four more dying days later.
Today, almost two months later, Rosal’s wife, Maria Gracia, has yet to accept the fact that the father of her three children is dead. But seasoned seafarers just grit their teeth, knowing that the shipping industry is among the most dangerous in the world.
Despite a safety-conscious regime instituted over the years by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), maritime disasters such as that of SS Norway’s boiler room explosion continue to happen. The Philippines is the world’s top supplier of seafarers and one in every five seamen onboard international ocean-going vessels is Filipino. For this reason, the chances of having Filipinos among the casualties in any major maritime disaster are high.
In the SS Norway explosion, which is regarded as the most fatal cruise-ship accident in the United States in over a decade, seven of the eight who died were Filipinos, as were 14 of the injured, most of them suffering from burns.
Last month, four Filipino mariners also lost their lives in an explosion aboard the Maltese-flagged tanker Efxinos, off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, while two others were injured.
Yet such tragedies have not daunted Filipino seafarers, who are eager to work overseas. The domestic shipping industry certainly cannot absorb them, and it pays far lower than what they can earn abroad. The government is also encouraging the brawn drain, not least because seafarers remit back to the Philippines some $1 billion every year.
Unfortunately, Filipinos are losing their competitiveness in today’s demand-driven global labor market. In the last few years, international ships have begun recruiting more seafarers from China and Eastern Europe. According to industry insiders, these mariners are relatively at par with Filipinos in terms of skills, but accept lower wages.
“We’re just one of the many labor-supplying countries,” says Ramon Tionloc Jr. a center director at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA). “In the 1980s, we used to experience double-digit growth rates in the deployment of sea-based workers. It has shrunk since then. We need to sustain our growth considering that the Chinese have been very strong in the last two years.”
Long before the advent of the country’s overseas labor program, ships sailing international waters already had Filipino seafarers onboard. Between 1975 and 1999, the seafaring work force increased eight times, credited largely to manning agencies that were able to market the skills of Filipino mariners.
There are some 500,000 registered Filipino seafarers but only 200,000 of them can find work onboard international ocean-going vessels at any one time. The growth in seafarer deployment has also plummeted in the last two years. Some studies say this could be an indication that the Philippine ship-manning industry may have already reached a plateau.
Most industry insiders agree that the government has been hard at work trying to stave off the decline. In the process, however, local seafarers are being asked to trade off some benefits so they would remain globally competitive.
The most recent POEA standard employment contract for seafarers onboard ocean-going vessels, which covers those deployed from June 2002 onwards, is seen by some seafarer groups as a sellout. Lawyer Edwin dela Cruz, president of the International Seafarers Action Center (ISAC), says the contract only shows that the government regards seafarers as a commodity “whose entitlements need to be diminished so they can be marketable.”
Under the old contract, deaths or injuries need only to occur during the seafarer’s employment, which begins at the time of his or her departure from the airport or seaport in the point of hire and ends upon his or her return to the said port when the contract ends. As long as this was the case, few employers would even bother to ask about the circumstances of deaths or injuries. Claim payments were automatically remitted in two to three months.
Today the burden of proving that a death or injury is work related has been shifted to seafarers, who are at a disadvantage as they and their families do not have access to documents to prove their claims. Giehrjem Puracan, a lawyer pursuing seafarers’ claims, says, “The records are, in most cases, in the hands of the ship owners.”
The shift, others say, comes even as the shipping industry remains fraught with health and safety risks. Medical studies show evidence of an increased risk of mortality among seafarers, with ordinary crew members having higher mortality than officers.
The Research Unit of Maritime Medicine in Denmark, for instance, says the risk of cancer is high. Among those working in the engine room, the hazards include the presence of asbestos, mineral oils, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, organic solvents and exhaust gases. Crews on tankers are also exposed to airborne carcinogens like benzene and organic solvents that affect the nervous system. Other research, meanwhile, suggests an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases among seafarers.
From November 1998 to 2001, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF)-Philippines recorded 367 casualties among Filipino seafarers, 66 percent of whom fell ill or met accidents, with 34 percent dying as a result of sunk ships, explosions and other mishaps. By the time it closed its Manila office in 2002, cases had almost doubled.
Since last September, the newly formed ISAC has received 140 seafarers’ complaints, half of which concern deaths, sicknesses and injuries.
But because of the POEA contract’s “work-related” clause as applied to claiming benefits for deaths, illnesses and injuries, dela Cruz says the claims process has become more litigious, allowing employers to question how the seafarers’ misfortunes are related to their work. He remarks, “It’s become a lawyer’s paradise.”
Puracan, for his part, says that beginning this year, the tack of manning agencies, which supply ships with crew, has been to argue the non-work-related circumstances surrounding the death, sickness or injury of seafarers.
This time, too, when the seafarers’ claims get approved at the arbiter level of the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC), employers are no longer as ready to offer a settlement, but are more inclined to bring the cases up to the Commission level, and even all the way to the Court of Appeals.
According to the POEA, though, what manning agencies are actually contesting are accident-related deaths and injuries resulting from illnesses, particularly pre-existing conditions that seafarers knowingly conceal. This is also a new feature of the POEA contract, and one that could not only disqualify seafarers from any compensation and benefits, but can even be a valid ground for termination.
“They are asking why they should be made liable for, say a cancer or diabetes case, which cannot happen in a month after a crew member goes on board,” says Tionloc who notes the prevalence in the past of sickness and disability cases entertained by the P&I (Protection and Indemnity) clubs that facilitate payments of claims from ship owners.
Ship engineer Nelson Ramirez, who is also president of the United Filipino Seafarers (UFS), says the legitimate claims far outnumber those that are not. But he also admits that there are cases filed by “professional complainants” dictated upon by “ambulance chasers.”
“There are really those who take advantage,” says Ramirez. “You choke while eating on the ship — is that work-related?”
“Any death, any injury is unfortunate,” says Doris Magsaysay-Ho, chief executive officer of the Magsaysay Maritime Corporation, one of the country’s largest manning agencies. “But it has to be accident-related. Yet what we have is a lot of deaths that comes from sickness. So how can you now be sure that a case is an accident-related or a health-related injury or death if somebody died of heart attack?”
That would have been the function of medical examinations, if administered strictly and extensively. Magsaysay-Ho concedes, however, that not every manning agency adopts these because some of the tests are very expensive. Some of the agencies therefore resort only to basic health examinations that are unable to detect pre-existing illnesses.
So, Capt. Rolando Cervantes asks, why penalize the seafarers who submit dutifully to any examination conducted by company-designated physicians? Cervantes argues further that the same doctors would not allow them to board a ship if they are medically unfit.
If Cervantes sounds bitter, it may be because he has yet to receive a sickness allowance after being diagnosed with hypertension and sent home in April. Under the POEA contract, hypertension is compensated only if it impairs the functions of major body organs. The 48-year-old grumbles, “It seems I have to either get well first or become disabled before I get anything.”
The casualties in the SS Norway tragedy did not face such disputes. The injured Filipino crew who came from Magsaysay were covered by a collective bargaining agreement, entitling them to benefits of as much as $60,000.
Under the POEA contract, however, death benefits are pegged at $50,000 plus $7,000 for each minor child, not exceeding four in total. But the Filipino seafarers who were killed on the SS Norway are entitled to more. The six fatalities from the manning agency C.F. Sharp Crew Management were also covered by a collective agreement of the ITF, ensuring $60,000 for each family, plus $15,000 for each dependent not older than 21 years but not exceeding four per family.
The Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL), which operates SS Norway, was also willing to give each family $3,000 as funeral and burial allowance, instead of the $1,000 stipulated in the POEA contract, says C.F. Sharp assistant manager Aurita Milanco. The manning agency, however, decided to stick to just the regular burial allowance. This, says Milanco, was to avoid legal complications after a U.S. lawyer filed damage claims of over $10 billion in compensation against NCL in Miami, Florida, on behalf of the accident’s survivors and the families of those who died.
Another controversial amendment in the POEA contract says that once seafarers or their families claim death and disability benefits, they can no longer file damages for negligence or tort cases against a foreign ship. Seen by some as another concession to the ship owners, the stipulation runs contrary to the International Labor Organization (ILO)’s model receipt and release form for contractual claims which provides for the right of seafarers’ legal heirs or dependents to pursue tort and damage claims.
And while the stipulated compensation are very generous by local standards, they pale in comparison to those enjoyed by seafarers employed in, say, German vessels, who can get as much as $125,000 (crew members) and $250,000 (officers) in death benefits. Lawyer Puracan also argues, “Why limit the value of human life to only $50,000? If at all, shouldn’t the government be the first to allow workers more opportunities to improve their lot?”
Magsaysay-Ho, though, says, “While we can’t put a cap on human life, unfortunately, there’s no magic number that says a life is worth this much. There’s none. That’s not the way it works. There has to be a sort of cap on an employers’ liability or else people will be scared to hire us.”
“When there’s merit for payment suffering, the owner is willing to offer it so that the families can start anew,” she adds. “It’s a matter of discussing it. When it’s discussed directly there are no commissions by anybody. There are no legal fees.”
UFS’s Ramirez also warns against “ambulance chasers,” or lawyers who dangle the prospects of huge sums of money in awards before their distressed clients. Says Ramirez: “More often than not, they just make the seamen hope in vain.”
Last October, the SS Norway lost a case filed by a Polish engine repairman who suffered a back injury for working on the ship’s leaking sprinkler pipes 20 hours a day for a week. He was awarded $705,000 by a Miami-Dade county jury, which also found the cruise ship unseaworthy.
At least two other cases involved local seafarers. In February 1997, cabin steward Wilfredo Delfin of the cruise ship Royal Odyssey (now the Norwegian Star) apparently died by drowning. But NCL officials reported his death as suicide, and withheld his death benefits. Delfin’s heirs sued and won $120,000 in damages.
The NCL was also sued for its alleged failure to provide for the medical treatment of a bar waitress who suffered psychotic disorder while on board the Norwegian Crown. A $10,000-claim for partial disability has been awarded at the arbiter level. It is on appeal at the NLRC. - ALECKS P. PABICO, PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
DoLE hits ban on RP seamen as 3 more seized
By Kristine L. Alave
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: April 21, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—Barring Filipino seafarers from ships in the pirate-infested seas off Somalia could “kill” the sea-based recruitment industry, said Labor Secretary Marianito Roque.
It would not be feasible to impose such a ban, Roque said, noting that 25 percent of foreign cargo vessels passed through Somalia’s Gulf of Aden.
“It might kill the industry,” he said in a media briefing Monday.
Meanwhile, a Belgian ship, the 65-meter Pompei, has fallen into pirate hands about 150 kilometers north of the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.
A reconnaissance flight Saturday by a Spanish naval helicopter showed that the Pompei was towing a much smaller vessel—thought to be a pirate boat—and was headed toward the Somali coast some 700 km away.
The captain of the 1,850-ton vessel is Dutch while the rest of the crew are three Filipinos, two Belgians and four Croatians. It was the first Belgian ship to be seized by Somali pirates.
The Philippines is a major crewing source for international shipping lines, with some 35,000-40,000 Filipino seafarers aboard vessels all over the world.
Roque said that contrary to reports, the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) still had not received an order from Malacañang imposing a deployment ban.
He said the DoLE would meet with industry representatives and stakeholders to review the contract for seafarers and discuss measures to protect them.
Roque said the standard employment contract did not specify the routes to be taken by a vessel and they were looking into the possibility of mandating ship owners and recruiters to specify the itinerary.
Another option would be to put an “addendum” at the bottom of the contract, which would prohibit a seafarer from joining a ship traversing Somali waters, he said.
Roque was scheduled to meet with European ship owners who were meeting in London Monday night.
Over 100 Filipino seamen are still in the hands of Somali pirates, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it favored a total deployment ban, a proposal that the labor department nixed last year. Instead of a complete ban, the labor department ordered shipping lines to allow workers to disembark if they did not want wish to pass through the Gulf of Aden.
Somali pirates attacked more than 130 merchant ships in the Gulf of Aden last year, an increase of more than 200 percent on 2007, according to the International Maritime Bureau which tracks piracy. With Agence France-Presse
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: April 21, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—Barring Filipino seafarers from ships in the pirate-infested seas off Somalia could “kill” the sea-based recruitment industry, said Labor Secretary Marianito Roque.
It would not be feasible to impose such a ban, Roque said, noting that 25 percent of foreign cargo vessels passed through Somalia’s Gulf of Aden.
“It might kill the industry,” he said in a media briefing Monday.
Meanwhile, a Belgian ship, the 65-meter Pompei, has fallen into pirate hands about 150 kilometers north of the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.
A reconnaissance flight Saturday by a Spanish naval helicopter showed that the Pompei was towing a much smaller vessel—thought to be a pirate boat—and was headed toward the Somali coast some 700 km away.
The captain of the 1,850-ton vessel is Dutch while the rest of the crew are three Filipinos, two Belgians and four Croatians. It was the first Belgian ship to be seized by Somali pirates.
The Philippines is a major crewing source for international shipping lines, with some 35,000-40,000 Filipino seafarers aboard vessels all over the world.
Roque said that contrary to reports, the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) still had not received an order from Malacañang imposing a deployment ban.
He said the DoLE would meet with industry representatives and stakeholders to review the contract for seafarers and discuss measures to protect them.
Roque said the standard employment contract did not specify the routes to be taken by a vessel and they were looking into the possibility of mandating ship owners and recruiters to specify the itinerary.
Another option would be to put an “addendum” at the bottom of the contract, which would prohibit a seafarer from joining a ship traversing Somali waters, he said.
Roque was scheduled to meet with European ship owners who were meeting in London Monday night.
Over 100 Filipino seamen are still in the hands of Somali pirates, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it favored a total deployment ban, a proposal that the labor department nixed last year. Instead of a complete ban, the labor department ordered shipping lines to allow workers to disembark if they did not want wish to pass through the Gulf of Aden.
Somali pirates attacked more than 130 merchant ships in the Gulf of Aden last year, an increase of more than 200 percent on 2007, according to the International Maritime Bureau which tracks piracy. With Agence France-Presse
Dubai property giant sacks 500
Agence France-Presse INQUIRER.NET
Posted date: November 30, 2008
DUBAI--Dubai property giant Nakheel -- behind such grandiose projects as a one-kilometer tower and artificial palm-shaped islands -- said Sunday it has fired 500 staff because of the global financial crisis.
The government-controlled developer, one of the biggest employers in the booming Gulf emirate, also said it would be scaling back work on some of its projects.
"Approximately 15 percent of the total workforce, which amounts to 500 employees, was made redundant," it said in a statement, describing the move as "a responsible action in light of the current global market conditions."
It is the largest job cut to be announced in the wake of the global financial crisis in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates and in Dubai, a city of opulent hotels and shopping malls which hosts hundreds of thousands of foreign residents.
"We have the responsibility to adjust our short term business plans to accommodate the current global environment," said an unnamed spokesperson quoted in the statement.
"The redundancies are indeed regrettable, but a necessity dictated by operational requirements which are in turn dependent on demand," the spokesperson added.
Nakheel is in charge of developing several iconic projects in Dubai, including three palm-shaped man-made islands, only one of which is completed, and a cluster of islands in the shape of a map of the world.
It also announced last month a jaw-dropping plan to build a one-kilometer-high (3,280 feet) tower which would overshadow the still unfinished Burj Dubai, already the tallest on earth.
Nakheel also develops residential and commercial property, whose sales thrived after the sector was opened to foreign investors few years ago.
Dubai top officials insist that the emirate's real estate sector -- a major engine of economic growth in recent years -- will weather the global crisis, but investors appear to have lost confidence in the market which was until recently a great magnet for investments.
Posted date: November 30, 2008
DUBAI--Dubai property giant Nakheel -- behind such grandiose projects as a one-kilometer tower and artificial palm-shaped islands -- said Sunday it has fired 500 staff because of the global financial crisis.
The government-controlled developer, one of the biggest employers in the booming Gulf emirate, also said it would be scaling back work on some of its projects.
"Approximately 15 percent of the total workforce, which amounts to 500 employees, was made redundant," it said in a statement, describing the move as "a responsible action in light of the current global market conditions."
It is the largest job cut to be announced in the wake of the global financial crisis in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates and in Dubai, a city of opulent hotels and shopping malls which hosts hundreds of thousands of foreign residents.
"We have the responsibility to adjust our short term business plans to accommodate the current global environment," said an unnamed spokesperson quoted in the statement.
"The redundancies are indeed regrettable, but a necessity dictated by operational requirements which are in turn dependent on demand," the spokesperson added.
Nakheel is in charge of developing several iconic projects in Dubai, including three palm-shaped man-made islands, only one of which is completed, and a cluster of islands in the shape of a map of the world.
It also announced last month a jaw-dropping plan to build a one-kilometer-high (3,280 feet) tower which would overshadow the still unfinished Burj Dubai, already the tallest on earth.
Nakheel also develops residential and commercial property, whose sales thrived after the sector was opened to foreign investors few years ago.
Dubai top officials insist that the emirate's real estate sector -- a major engine of economic growth in recent years -- will weather the global crisis, but investors appear to have lost confidence in the market which was until recently a great magnet for investments.
Ex-NPA turns a corner in Dubai
By Emman Cena
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: September 23, 2008
ROSENDO SANCHEZ JOINED the revolution like many student activists during the martial law years.
A cum laude graduate of the University of the Philippines in 1979, he topped the mechanical engineering board exams two years later. Immediately he got a good job as a junior engineer at Shell Philippines, one of the biggest oil companies in the country. But he quit this promising job to heed what he heard as the call of the times.
He found himself with the communist New People’s Army in the mountains of Iloilo and Davao, living the revolutionary way of life for a nine long and memorable years truly believing in its cause. On top of that, the guerilla movement led him to his life partner, Maggie, a social worker teaching in a local barrio church in Iloilo.
It was love made in the mountains, Sanchez says.
They had their firstborn years later, built a makeshift house in Davao, Maggie’s hometown, and started a simple family life while he was still active with the rebel movement.
But the setup didn’t work well for them. Rosendo had to regularly attend to his duties in the mountains, but “I already had two sons who I had to feed and send to decent schools. I needed money badly, having no house and permanent address in 1991.”
After a thorough assessment, he decided to call it quits. “They understood,” he says about his fellow-revolutionaries. “It was a bittersweet goodbye to the movement I dearly loved.”
A new struggle in Brunei
He flew back to Manila in 1991 and looked for a job.
“I literally scrambled to relearn the new methods and new practices of engineering. Nine years in the forested mountains of Iloilo and Davao is no joke.”
With sheer determination, he reviewed and brushed up on his lessons.
Soon he was hired as a project engineer in Mashhor, Brunei, and a year later managed to buy a lot in Iloilo. Years later, Sanchez was able to take his family to Brunei. He quickly got regular promotions and benefits.
But he was homesick after nine years. He also didn’t like the education his three children were getting in Brunei. Sanchez and family came home in 2000. The next year he set up his two companies.
The next challenge in Dubai
In 2005, he was contacted for the Dubai project and left in 2006 for a year, while still overseeing RBS Engineering technologies and RBSanchez Consulting Engineers which he co-owns with brother Rolly, a structural engineer.
Sanchez remembers his bad start in Dubai.
“Who’s smoking in here?” he had asked loudly as he entered the interview room. In the cramped office a stern-looking Arab man, cigar between his fingers, was irked by his comment. The man, he soon found out, was to be his employer at the Burj Dubai Tower.
“Obviously, (the remark) irked him big time. He said I sounded arrogant.”
“Apprehensive as he was about my attitude, I was still hired, but was treated as a second-class worker,” Sanchez said of his most memorable incident as he started work in Dubai.
Earning employer’s trust
Though employed as a senior design manager, he was made to sit with the rank and file employees.
For a few months his every movement was checked and monitored. His work was continuously questioned.
“They were at first doubtful of my output but later discovered I was doing an excellent job,” said Sanchez. “It helped that in UP we were taught American and international standards. Employers commended me for that and I was given more assignments and entrusted with major projects.”
He soon earned their trust and was moved to a more comfortable office duly accorded a senior engineer.
Sanchez headed the High-Voltage Alternate Current (HVAC) Department of the Burj Dubai Tower, in 2006the tallest high-rise structure in the world.
His own companies
At contract’s end in 2007, he came home to attend to his own companies. Set up in 2001 and based at the Mega Plaza Tower in Ortigas, RBS Engineering Technologies and RBSanchez Consulting Engineers are focused on project design and consultancy.
Sanchez says that despite being relatively new in the industry, his companies have already attracted big-commissioned projects locally and abroad. His clients include Kraft Foods Inc., Toyota Motors, Shell Philippines, San Miguel Corporation, Penn Philippines, the Fort Bonifacio Stopover project, various hotels, malls, hospitals and food stores nationwide.
“But all these blessings didn’t just land on my lap,” he said. “I had to fight an uphill battle.”
“Everything is God’s gift,” said Sanchez, now 50 and himself an employer supervising about 25 employees.
His wife Maggie, who in the past taught in barrio schools and churches, now owns her own school in Parañaque.
An activist at heart
In small ways, Sanchez helps send a few students to school through his companies. Four high school graduates have been sent to Autocad and HVAC trainings for possible employment in his companies.
While there are still invitations and job offers abroad, Sanchez says he would like to retire here.
“But with the spiraling cost of commodities, I may consider it again,” he added.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: September 23, 2008
ROSENDO SANCHEZ JOINED the revolution like many student activists during the martial law years.
A cum laude graduate of the University of the Philippines in 1979, he topped the mechanical engineering board exams two years later. Immediately he got a good job as a junior engineer at Shell Philippines, one of the biggest oil companies in the country. But he quit this promising job to heed what he heard as the call of the times.
He found himself with the communist New People’s Army in the mountains of Iloilo and Davao, living the revolutionary way of life for a nine long and memorable years truly believing in its cause. On top of that, the guerilla movement led him to his life partner, Maggie, a social worker teaching in a local barrio church in Iloilo.
It was love made in the mountains, Sanchez says.
They had their firstborn years later, built a makeshift house in Davao, Maggie’s hometown, and started a simple family life while he was still active with the rebel movement.
But the setup didn’t work well for them. Rosendo had to regularly attend to his duties in the mountains, but “I already had two sons who I had to feed and send to decent schools. I needed money badly, having no house and permanent address in 1991.”
After a thorough assessment, he decided to call it quits. “They understood,” he says about his fellow-revolutionaries. “It was a bittersweet goodbye to the movement I dearly loved.”
A new struggle in Brunei
He flew back to Manila in 1991 and looked for a job.
“I literally scrambled to relearn the new methods and new practices of engineering. Nine years in the forested mountains of Iloilo and Davao is no joke.”
With sheer determination, he reviewed and brushed up on his lessons.
Soon he was hired as a project engineer in Mashhor, Brunei, and a year later managed to buy a lot in Iloilo. Years later, Sanchez was able to take his family to Brunei. He quickly got regular promotions and benefits.
But he was homesick after nine years. He also didn’t like the education his three children were getting in Brunei. Sanchez and family came home in 2000. The next year he set up his two companies.
The next challenge in Dubai
In 2005, he was contacted for the Dubai project and left in 2006 for a year, while still overseeing RBS Engineering technologies and RBSanchez Consulting Engineers which he co-owns with brother Rolly, a structural engineer.
Sanchez remembers his bad start in Dubai.
“Who’s smoking in here?” he had asked loudly as he entered the interview room. In the cramped office a stern-looking Arab man, cigar between his fingers, was irked by his comment. The man, he soon found out, was to be his employer at the Burj Dubai Tower.
“Obviously, (the remark) irked him big time. He said I sounded arrogant.”
“Apprehensive as he was about my attitude, I was still hired, but was treated as a second-class worker,” Sanchez said of his most memorable incident as he started work in Dubai.
Earning employer’s trust
Though employed as a senior design manager, he was made to sit with the rank and file employees.
For a few months his every movement was checked and monitored. His work was continuously questioned.
“They were at first doubtful of my output but later discovered I was doing an excellent job,” said Sanchez. “It helped that in UP we were taught American and international standards. Employers commended me for that and I was given more assignments and entrusted with major projects.”
He soon earned their trust and was moved to a more comfortable office duly accorded a senior engineer.
Sanchez headed the High-Voltage Alternate Current (HVAC) Department of the Burj Dubai Tower, in 2006the tallest high-rise structure in the world.
His own companies
At contract’s end in 2007, he came home to attend to his own companies. Set up in 2001 and based at the Mega Plaza Tower in Ortigas, RBS Engineering Technologies and RBSanchez Consulting Engineers are focused on project design and consultancy.
Sanchez says that despite being relatively new in the industry, his companies have already attracted big-commissioned projects locally and abroad. His clients include Kraft Foods Inc., Toyota Motors, Shell Philippines, San Miguel Corporation, Penn Philippines, the Fort Bonifacio Stopover project, various hotels, malls, hospitals and food stores nationwide.
“But all these blessings didn’t just land on my lap,” he said. “I had to fight an uphill battle.”
“Everything is God’s gift,” said Sanchez, now 50 and himself an employer supervising about 25 employees.
His wife Maggie, who in the past taught in barrio schools and churches, now owns her own school in Parañaque.
An activist at heart
In small ways, Sanchez helps send a few students to school through his companies. Four high school graduates have been sent to Autocad and HVAC trainings for possible employment in his companies.
While there are still invitations and job offers abroad, Sanchez says he would like to retire here.
“But with the spiraling cost of commodities, I may consider it again,” he added.
Crisis affects Dubai migrant workers too
Agence France-Presse INQUIRER.NET
Posted date: February 15, 2009
DUBAI – Low-paid Asian workers who toil long days to build the skyscrapers of Dubai have become the latest victims of the global financial crisis as companies run short of business and money.
For many years, the Gulf emirate was a magnet for South Asian workers who fed the booming economy with cheap manpower – from cleaners and gardeners to skilled and unskilled builders.
A report issued earlier this month showed that $582 billion worth of building projects in the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, had been put on hold due to the slowdown. That was 45 percent of the total.
Arnold, a 26-year-old Filipino machine operator, found a job in a small aluminum factory only two months after arriving in Dubai last summer. But in January, he and six others from the 15-strong workforce were laid off.
"I am staying in Dubai trying to find another job," he said, pointing out that his previous employer lost a great deal of business when many construction projects ground to a halt, cutting demand for aluminum products.
Six years of spectacular growth in the UAE construction sector, mainly in Dubai, absorbed hundreds of thousands of workers, mostly from South Asia. That had a knock-on effect, creating further opportunities for migrants.
But the financial crisis, mainly in construction and related industries, is reversing that trend, forcing foreign workers to go home.
"The crisis is worse in the Philippines. We have no future there. We are looking for part-time jobs here, anything," Arnold told Agence France-Presse as he hung out with two friends who had also lost their jobs.
Christopher, a compatriot, said he has been in Dubai for around nine months working as a welder during the day and a barista in the evening.
He and his wife, who also works in a Dubai coffee shop, used to send 500 dirhams ($136) a month home, where their two kids were left behind.
Migrant workers send billions of dollars home every year. One money transfer firm, UAE Exchange, said its volume last year was $12 billion, most of it to India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines.
Like Arnold, Christopher was working illegally in the hope that an employer would get him a work permit. Now he is searching desperately for anything.
But even for laborers who were brought to the UAE on a work visa to satisfy the needs of the once-booming economy, many are receiving the pink slip.
"Some 200 gardeners were sacked recently from our company" out of about 10,000 workers, said an Indian as he planted saplings in the garden of an elegant office building in Dubai.
"They told us the company does not have much work and is short of money," said the man in his mid-40s, refusing to give his name.
Two other colleagues, an Indian and a Bangladeshi, carried on trimming the hedge, appearing hesitant to say anything that might jeopardize their jobs.
"We are expecting to lose our jobs," said the man, who earns a meager 500 dirhams ($136) a month in return for 48 hours a week.
He lamented that two years ago he had to pay what was for him a fortune of around 10,000 dirhams ($2,725) to Indian intermediaries to get a job in Dubai.
Murukesan, an Indian cleaner, said his employer, a large cleaning and maintenance company, last week told workers who had completed at least two years of work to go home on four-month unpaid vacations.
"They said do not come back until we call you," he said with a faint smile, appearing content as he has completed only 18 months of his contract.
"In the past, workers were not taking vacations, even after four years of continuous work," he said, highlighting a huge work load in the immediate past.
It appears some of the unpaid "vacations" are simply a way of getting rid of people without having to pay them off. Under UAE law, workers laid off must be paid 21 days' salary for each of the first five years worked and a month's salary for every year after that.
"They are trying to find excuses to bypass the rules of terminating a contract," said Monir al-Zaman, labor attaché at the Bangladeshi embassy.
"Compensation should be paid if workers are being fired," he told AFP, adding that companies should resort to cutting overtime work and even reduce salaries before laying off workers.
In December, Khalfan al-Kaabi, a member of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce board of directors, said up to 45 percent of construction workers could be laid off this year if private sector projects in the UAE were delayed or cancelled.
Zaman said he could not provide a figure on Bangladeshi workers having lost their jobs in the UAE, because the process is not done "formally".
He also pointed out that he noticed, during inspection visits to labor camps that many workers stayed in the UAE even if they were not being paid, in hope of finding work.
But poor unemployed workers cannot linger for long if jobs remain rare.
"Maybe this month I have to decide to stay or go ... because I don't have any money. Now I'm borrowing from friends," said Arnold.
Posted date: February 15, 2009
DUBAI – Low-paid Asian workers who toil long days to build the skyscrapers of Dubai have become the latest victims of the global financial crisis as companies run short of business and money.
For many years, the Gulf emirate was a magnet for South Asian workers who fed the booming economy with cheap manpower – from cleaners and gardeners to skilled and unskilled builders.
A report issued earlier this month showed that $582 billion worth of building projects in the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, had been put on hold due to the slowdown. That was 45 percent of the total.
Arnold, a 26-year-old Filipino machine operator, found a job in a small aluminum factory only two months after arriving in Dubai last summer. But in January, he and six others from the 15-strong workforce were laid off.
"I am staying in Dubai trying to find another job," he said, pointing out that his previous employer lost a great deal of business when many construction projects ground to a halt, cutting demand for aluminum products.
Six years of spectacular growth in the UAE construction sector, mainly in Dubai, absorbed hundreds of thousands of workers, mostly from South Asia. That had a knock-on effect, creating further opportunities for migrants.
But the financial crisis, mainly in construction and related industries, is reversing that trend, forcing foreign workers to go home.
"The crisis is worse in the Philippines. We have no future there. We are looking for part-time jobs here, anything," Arnold told Agence France-Presse as he hung out with two friends who had also lost their jobs.
Christopher, a compatriot, said he has been in Dubai for around nine months working as a welder during the day and a barista in the evening.
He and his wife, who also works in a Dubai coffee shop, used to send 500 dirhams ($136) a month home, where their two kids were left behind.
Migrant workers send billions of dollars home every year. One money transfer firm, UAE Exchange, said its volume last year was $12 billion, most of it to India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines.
Like Arnold, Christopher was working illegally in the hope that an employer would get him a work permit. Now he is searching desperately for anything.
But even for laborers who were brought to the UAE on a work visa to satisfy the needs of the once-booming economy, many are receiving the pink slip.
"Some 200 gardeners were sacked recently from our company" out of about 10,000 workers, said an Indian as he planted saplings in the garden of an elegant office building in Dubai.
"They told us the company does not have much work and is short of money," said the man in his mid-40s, refusing to give his name.
Two other colleagues, an Indian and a Bangladeshi, carried on trimming the hedge, appearing hesitant to say anything that might jeopardize their jobs.
"We are expecting to lose our jobs," said the man, who earns a meager 500 dirhams ($136) a month in return for 48 hours a week.
He lamented that two years ago he had to pay what was for him a fortune of around 10,000 dirhams ($2,725) to Indian intermediaries to get a job in Dubai.
Murukesan, an Indian cleaner, said his employer, a large cleaning and maintenance company, last week told workers who had completed at least two years of work to go home on four-month unpaid vacations.
"They said do not come back until we call you," he said with a faint smile, appearing content as he has completed only 18 months of his contract.
"In the past, workers were not taking vacations, even after four years of continuous work," he said, highlighting a huge work load in the immediate past.
It appears some of the unpaid "vacations" are simply a way of getting rid of people without having to pay them off. Under UAE law, workers laid off must be paid 21 days' salary for each of the first five years worked and a month's salary for every year after that.
"They are trying to find excuses to bypass the rules of terminating a contract," said Monir al-Zaman, labor attaché at the Bangladeshi embassy.
"Compensation should be paid if workers are being fired," he told AFP, adding that companies should resort to cutting overtime work and even reduce salaries before laying off workers.
In December, Khalfan al-Kaabi, a member of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce board of directors, said up to 45 percent of construction workers could be laid off this year if private sector projects in the UAE were delayed or cancelled.
Zaman said he could not provide a figure on Bangladeshi workers having lost their jobs in the UAE, because the process is not done "formally".
He also pointed out that he noticed, during inspection visits to labor camps that many workers stayed in the UAE even if they were not being paid, in hope of finding work.
But poor unemployed workers cannot linger for long if jobs remain rare.
"Maybe this month I have to decide to stay or go ... because I don't have any money. Now I'm borrowing from friends," said Arnold.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
POEA to probe Dubai drivers’ plight
INQUIRER.net
Posted date: April 14, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—The spouses of the 137 stranded drivers in Dubai have filed their complaints of illegal recruitment in behalf of their husbands with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, a non-government organization helping distressed overseas Filipino workers said Tuesday.
The Blas F. Ople Policy Center, which brought the wives of the stranded drivers to POEA, said lawyer Rosemarie Duquez, head of the POEA’s Anti-Illegal Recruitment Branch, promised to summon the driver’s local licensed recruiter, CYM International Services, as part of the POEA probe.
Susan Ople, executive director of the center and former labor undersecretary, thus warned the public against non-existent jobs for drivers in Dubai.
She issued the warning following the case of the 137 bus drivers, who applied with CYM International Services after receiving flyers distributed at various terminals announcing the availability of 4,000 jobs for bus drivers in Dubai.
“It is outrageous that a licensed recruitment agency would resort to illegal recruitment practices to dupe these bus drivers out of their hard-earned money,” Ople said.
Upon arriving in Dubai, the workers learned that Dubai’s Road Transport Authority (RTA), a government agency that was supposed to hire them, was not aware of such recruitment efforts and is not hiring any more drivers.
The bus drivers, most of whom came from Central Luzon, were promised hefty salaries in exchange for a placement fee of P150,000. The drivers and their families borrowed money from the lending agency referred to them by the recruiter.
“The promise was that after a month’s training, a Dubai company will hire them as bus drivers. They took out loans to pay the exorbitant placement fees because they thought they would earn enough in Dubai,” Ople explained in a statement e-mailed to media outfits.
“Several of these workers have been in Dubai since January, and until now, they have not been trained nor hired and the company involved was not even aware of such arrangements,” she added.
At the same time, she asked the government to assign a specific agency to monitor and regulate lending companies that offer loans specifically to OFWs.
The wives of the bus drivers also went to the Department of Foreign Affairs to seek help for the horrendous living conditions of their husbands, who have resorted to scavenging in dumpsites for recyclable items they can sell.
The drivers’ plight brought out the Filipinos’ innate generosity with the Filipinos in Dubai donating food, water, and other items.
“I spoke to Claro Oliver, one of the bus drivers, and he was so touched by the outpouring of support from Filipinos who drove all the way to their camp in an aid convoy bringing food, toiletries, and drinking water,” Ople said.
The wives also requested assistance so that their husbands can retrieve their passports from CYM International Services’ counterpart agency in Dubai.
Ople also urged the government to allot part of the 220,000 job commitments obtained by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the bus drivers stranded in Dubai.
“This is a good test case for the commitments obtained. The drivers are highly professional and well-experienced, and most of them really prefer to work in the Emirates so they can pay back their loans,” she said.
Posted date: April 14, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—The spouses of the 137 stranded drivers in Dubai have filed their complaints of illegal recruitment in behalf of their husbands with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, a non-government organization helping distressed overseas Filipino workers said Tuesday.
The Blas F. Ople Policy Center, which brought the wives of the stranded drivers to POEA, said lawyer Rosemarie Duquez, head of the POEA’s Anti-Illegal Recruitment Branch, promised to summon the driver’s local licensed recruiter, CYM International Services, as part of the POEA probe.
Susan Ople, executive director of the center and former labor undersecretary, thus warned the public against non-existent jobs for drivers in Dubai.
She issued the warning following the case of the 137 bus drivers, who applied with CYM International Services after receiving flyers distributed at various terminals announcing the availability of 4,000 jobs for bus drivers in Dubai.
“It is outrageous that a licensed recruitment agency would resort to illegal recruitment practices to dupe these bus drivers out of their hard-earned money,” Ople said.
Upon arriving in Dubai, the workers learned that Dubai’s Road Transport Authority (RTA), a government agency that was supposed to hire them, was not aware of such recruitment efforts and is not hiring any more drivers.
The bus drivers, most of whom came from Central Luzon, were promised hefty salaries in exchange for a placement fee of P150,000. The drivers and their families borrowed money from the lending agency referred to them by the recruiter.
“The promise was that after a month’s training, a Dubai company will hire them as bus drivers. They took out loans to pay the exorbitant placement fees because they thought they would earn enough in Dubai,” Ople explained in a statement e-mailed to media outfits.
“Several of these workers have been in Dubai since January, and until now, they have not been trained nor hired and the company involved was not even aware of such arrangements,” she added.
At the same time, she asked the government to assign a specific agency to monitor and regulate lending companies that offer loans specifically to OFWs.
The wives of the bus drivers also went to the Department of Foreign Affairs to seek help for the horrendous living conditions of their husbands, who have resorted to scavenging in dumpsites for recyclable items they can sell.
The drivers’ plight brought out the Filipinos’ innate generosity with the Filipinos in Dubai donating food, water, and other items.
“I spoke to Claro Oliver, one of the bus drivers, and he was so touched by the outpouring of support from Filipinos who drove all the way to their camp in an aid convoy bringing food, toiletries, and drinking water,” Ople said.
The wives also requested assistance so that their husbands can retrieve their passports from CYM International Services’ counterpart agency in Dubai.
Ople also urged the government to allot part of the 220,000 job commitments obtained by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the bus drivers stranded in Dubai.
“This is a good test case for the commitments obtained. The drivers are highly professional and well-experienced, and most of them really prefer to work in the Emirates so they can pay back their loans,” she said.
Recruiter of Dubai drivers suspended—POEA
DoLE chief assures jobs for 137 drivers
By Veronica Uy
INQUIRER.net
Posted date: April 15, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—The recruitment agency that deployed 137 Filipino drivers to Dubai and left them to fend for themselves by scavenging for food over several months has been suspended, Administrator Jennifer Manalili of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration said Wednesday.
Manalili, who is in Dubai and has interviewed some of the drivers, said she has their affidavits.
POEA Deputy Administrator Viveca Catalig, who is officer-in-charge in Manila, has already signed the suspension order, Manalili said in a phone interview with INQUIRER.net.
In a related development, Labor Secretary Marianito Roque has assured the stranded Filipinos’ wives that their husbands will be redeployed to Qatar where they will be employed as bus drivers.
Blas F. Ople Policy Center president Susan Ople said Roque, who is in Qatar for a series of meetings with his counterpart and prospective employers, called her around noon and assured her that charges would be filed against CYM International Services and that he has already given instructions for the agency to be suspended.
CYM International Services is a licensed agency.
Ople said some of bus drivers are expected home Wednesday night.
Citing her discussions with the drivers’ wives, Ople said they welcomed this new development and vowed to run after the recruiter. They said Roque's assurance was a source of relief as this means that their husbands will start earning soon.
According to Fe, wife of driver Claro Oliver, their eldest son had to stop going to school as a result of the recruitment scam. Another wife said she and her husband had to use their house and lot as collateral just to obtain a loan to pay the P150,000 placement fee charged by CYM International.
The center called on the Senate labor committee to look into the practices of lending companies that exploit the desire of jobseekers to pay their recruiters.
The center provided the wives of the bus drivers free legal assistance. “They have a very strong case against CYM International Services and even the lending company involved. I asked them if they will pursue the case even if their husbands are already employed in Qatar, and they were firm and united in giving me a resounding yes,” Ople said.
The men were hired as drivers of the UAE's Road and Transport Authority on a three-year contract that would give them 5,200 dirhams (about P67,600) as monthly salary. They arrived in Dubai in January but were unable to get the jobs they were promised.
By Veronica Uy
INQUIRER.net
Posted date: April 15, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—The recruitment agency that deployed 137 Filipino drivers to Dubai and left them to fend for themselves by scavenging for food over several months has been suspended, Administrator Jennifer Manalili of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration said Wednesday.
Manalili, who is in Dubai and has interviewed some of the drivers, said she has their affidavits.
POEA Deputy Administrator Viveca Catalig, who is officer-in-charge in Manila, has already signed the suspension order, Manalili said in a phone interview with INQUIRER.net.
In a related development, Labor Secretary Marianito Roque has assured the stranded Filipinos’ wives that their husbands will be redeployed to Qatar where they will be employed as bus drivers.
Blas F. Ople Policy Center president Susan Ople said Roque, who is in Qatar for a series of meetings with his counterpart and prospective employers, called her around noon and assured her that charges would be filed against CYM International Services and that he has already given instructions for the agency to be suspended.
CYM International Services is a licensed agency.
Ople said some of bus drivers are expected home Wednesday night.
Citing her discussions with the drivers’ wives, Ople said they welcomed this new development and vowed to run after the recruiter. They said Roque's assurance was a source of relief as this means that their husbands will start earning soon.
According to Fe, wife of driver Claro Oliver, their eldest son had to stop going to school as a result of the recruitment scam. Another wife said she and her husband had to use their house and lot as collateral just to obtain a loan to pay the P150,000 placement fee charged by CYM International.
The center called on the Senate labor committee to look into the practices of lending companies that exploit the desire of jobseekers to pay their recruiters.
The center provided the wives of the bus drivers free legal assistance. “They have a very strong case against CYM International Services and even the lending company involved. I asked them if they will pursue the case even if their husbands are already employed in Qatar, and they were firm and united in giving me a resounding yes,” Ople said.
The men were hired as drivers of the UAE's Road and Transport Authority on a three-year contract that would give them 5,200 dirhams (about P67,600) as monthly salary. They arrived in Dubai in January but were unable to get the jobs they were promised.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Pinoy Kasi : A Pinay in Timor Leste
By Michael Tan
Columnist
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: April 17, 2009
Timor Leste has been in the news lately because their First Lady, Jacqueline Aquino Siapno, is from the Philippines. Not only that, when she came to visit the Philippines with her 5-year-old son, Hadomi, she decided to just take a bus home to Dagupan City, and a tricycle from the bus station to Barangay Bonuan Gueset.
The trip made the news, startling (and somewhat upsetting) her husband because of the security implications, but Siapno shrugged off the media frenzy, commenting that she’s a martial arts practitioner and can defend herself. Siapno’s husband is Fernando Lasama de Araujo, head of Timor Leste’s National Parliament.
Many of my friends have been even more charmed by the news coverage because it included a different kind of love story between our Filipina and her husband.
A quick detour here about surnames: Some of our newspapers have been calling her “Mrs. Lasama,” a curious reflection of differences in newspaper policies. The Philippine Daily Inquirer prefers to call her by her maiden name, Siapno.
But why Lasama? Following Spanish and Portuguese tradition, a person’s name, like Fernando Lasama de Araujo, has the paternal surname, followed by the maternal, so he’s actually Lasama, not Araujo (oops, the Inquirer uses Araujo, maybe preferring the maternal name?).
We need more stories like this for our front pages because we do tend to get too conscious about status. Siapno shows how people can remain so simple and humble even when they reach high places. So, I thought I’d give even more space to this story, doing a recap of what’s been featured and taking this opportunity to talk about Timor Leste, also known as East Timor. We know far too little about our Southeast Asian neighbors and when it comes to Timor Leste, the reactions usually are, “Where’s that country?” and “Are they part of Asia?”
The other Catholic country
I thought I’d talk about Timor Leste first to give the context for Siapno’s story. Timor Leste means East Timor, Timor being an island that’s part of the Malay archipelago, and therefore of Southeast Asia. West Timor is part of Indonesia while East Timor (Timur Timor in Indonesian) is independent.
Timor Leste was a Portuguese colony until 1975, which explains why they are predominantly Catholic and why they have Portugese surnames. With 97 percent of Timor Leste’s population being Catholic (compared to 81 percent in the Philippines), the Philippines can’t continue to keep claiming to be the only predominantly Catholic or Christian country in the region.
After Portugal had its Carnation Revolution (a kind of people power revolt) in 1974 and overthrew a right-wing dictatorship, its colonies intensified their calls for independence. In Timor Leste, the political party Fretilin led the independence movement and in 1975, they declared Timor Leste’s independence from Portugal.
Indonesia, ruled at that time by the dictator Suharto, responded by invading Timor Leste and occupying it. The United States, Australia and other Western powers accepted the Indonesian invasion because they were worried about Fretilin, which was seen as too Left-leaning. Timor Leste was, and still is, an important geopolitical force with petroleum resources, and with its proximity to an often volatile Indonesia.
Between 1975 and 1999, the Indonesian occupation resulted in political oppression, massive population dislocations and many deaths. Published estimates of deaths range from 60,000 to 200,000, figures made even more horrific when you consider that Timor Leste’s population is only about a million.
Fretilin continued to lead the struggle for independence, but also pursued diplomatic channels to get international pressure exerted on Indonesia. In 1996, Bishop Carlos Belo and Fretilin leader Jose Ramos-Horta were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
In 1999, the United Nations supervised a referendum in Timor Leste, with 79 percent of votes cast supporting independence, but this was rejected by pro-Indonesian militia. More violence erupted and it was not until 2002 when Timor Leste was able to declare an independent republic.
The political situation is still unstable though because of power struggles. In 2006 there were riots in the capital Dili and last year there was an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao.
Doctor First Lady
Siapno is actually not officially the First Lady, the title attached to her because the incumbent president, Jose Ramos-Horta, is unmarried. (In Timor Leste, the president is head of state, a largely symbolic position, while the prime minister is the actual head of government.) Since Araujo is the second highest ranking official in Timor Leste, Siapno is First Lady.
I suspect Siapno wouldn’t care less about all this First Lady bit. Besides her bus trip, the media noticed how simply she dresses, without jewelry.
Anyway, back to our Pinay. I’m using information from the University of Melbourne, where her curriculum vitae appears because of her affiliation with their Asia Institute.
Siapno grew up in the Philippines but did part of her high school in the United States, moving on to Wellesley for her undergraduate work. She earned her master’s from the School of Oriental and Asian Studies at the University of London and her Ph.D. from the University of California in Berkeley. If we want to pursue this Filipino fixation with titles, she’s a Doctor First Lady.
I think newspapers should be talking more about her work. She has been a consultant with the United Nations Development Programme, Oxfam and other development agencies. The Inquirer did report that she was working with Amnesty International, an organization working for the release of political prisoners. Fernando Lasama was one of those political prisoners and Siapno, who was doing research in Indonesia, visited him in Jakarta, where he was serving a nine-year sentence for subversion.
Love blossomed and they kept in touch by correspondence. International pressure and Amnesty International do get results. Lasama was released in 1998 before finishing his sentence, and married Siapno in his home village in Timor Leste in 2001.
Beyond the First Lady title then, Siapno’s is quite accomplished. Her doctoral research in Indonesia produced a book, “Gender, Islam, Nationalism and the State in Aceh.” She was also associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. She teaches at the Universidade da Paz in Dili.
I’m always telling my students that with all the Filipina nannies raising the children of the world, we’re quietly “colonizing” the world. Don’t be surprised if a few years from now you have leaders of countries talking about their Filipina yaya, maybe even talking in English with an accent from yaya.
Siapno’s story reminds me that even now we already have Filipinos working in government, corporations, non-government organizations, making a difference for their adopted countries—and for the world.
* * *
Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph
Columnist
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: April 17, 2009
Timor Leste has been in the news lately because their First Lady, Jacqueline Aquino Siapno, is from the Philippines. Not only that, when she came to visit the Philippines with her 5-year-old son, Hadomi, she decided to just take a bus home to Dagupan City, and a tricycle from the bus station to Barangay Bonuan Gueset.
The trip made the news, startling (and somewhat upsetting) her husband because of the security implications, but Siapno shrugged off the media frenzy, commenting that she’s a martial arts practitioner and can defend herself. Siapno’s husband is Fernando Lasama de Araujo, head of Timor Leste’s National Parliament.
Many of my friends have been even more charmed by the news coverage because it included a different kind of love story between our Filipina and her husband.
A quick detour here about surnames: Some of our newspapers have been calling her “Mrs. Lasama,” a curious reflection of differences in newspaper policies. The Philippine Daily Inquirer prefers to call her by her maiden name, Siapno.
But why Lasama? Following Spanish and Portuguese tradition, a person’s name, like Fernando Lasama de Araujo, has the paternal surname, followed by the maternal, so he’s actually Lasama, not Araujo (oops, the Inquirer uses Araujo, maybe preferring the maternal name?).
We need more stories like this for our front pages because we do tend to get too conscious about status. Siapno shows how people can remain so simple and humble even when they reach high places. So, I thought I’d give even more space to this story, doing a recap of what’s been featured and taking this opportunity to talk about Timor Leste, also known as East Timor. We know far too little about our Southeast Asian neighbors and when it comes to Timor Leste, the reactions usually are, “Where’s that country?” and “Are they part of Asia?”
The other Catholic country
I thought I’d talk about Timor Leste first to give the context for Siapno’s story. Timor Leste means East Timor, Timor being an island that’s part of the Malay archipelago, and therefore of Southeast Asia. West Timor is part of Indonesia while East Timor (Timur Timor in Indonesian) is independent.
Timor Leste was a Portuguese colony until 1975, which explains why they are predominantly Catholic and why they have Portugese surnames. With 97 percent of Timor Leste’s population being Catholic (compared to 81 percent in the Philippines), the Philippines can’t continue to keep claiming to be the only predominantly Catholic or Christian country in the region.
After Portugal had its Carnation Revolution (a kind of people power revolt) in 1974 and overthrew a right-wing dictatorship, its colonies intensified their calls for independence. In Timor Leste, the political party Fretilin led the independence movement and in 1975, they declared Timor Leste’s independence from Portugal.
Indonesia, ruled at that time by the dictator Suharto, responded by invading Timor Leste and occupying it. The United States, Australia and other Western powers accepted the Indonesian invasion because they were worried about Fretilin, which was seen as too Left-leaning. Timor Leste was, and still is, an important geopolitical force with petroleum resources, and with its proximity to an often volatile Indonesia.
Between 1975 and 1999, the Indonesian occupation resulted in political oppression, massive population dislocations and many deaths. Published estimates of deaths range from 60,000 to 200,000, figures made even more horrific when you consider that Timor Leste’s population is only about a million.
Fretilin continued to lead the struggle for independence, but also pursued diplomatic channels to get international pressure exerted on Indonesia. In 1996, Bishop Carlos Belo and Fretilin leader Jose Ramos-Horta were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
In 1999, the United Nations supervised a referendum in Timor Leste, with 79 percent of votes cast supporting independence, but this was rejected by pro-Indonesian militia. More violence erupted and it was not until 2002 when Timor Leste was able to declare an independent republic.
The political situation is still unstable though because of power struggles. In 2006 there were riots in the capital Dili and last year there was an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao.
Doctor First Lady
Siapno is actually not officially the First Lady, the title attached to her because the incumbent president, Jose Ramos-Horta, is unmarried. (In Timor Leste, the president is head of state, a largely symbolic position, while the prime minister is the actual head of government.) Since Araujo is the second highest ranking official in Timor Leste, Siapno is First Lady.
I suspect Siapno wouldn’t care less about all this First Lady bit. Besides her bus trip, the media noticed how simply she dresses, without jewelry.
Anyway, back to our Pinay. I’m using information from the University of Melbourne, where her curriculum vitae appears because of her affiliation with their Asia Institute.
Siapno grew up in the Philippines but did part of her high school in the United States, moving on to Wellesley for her undergraduate work. She earned her master’s from the School of Oriental and Asian Studies at the University of London and her Ph.D. from the University of California in Berkeley. If we want to pursue this Filipino fixation with titles, she’s a Doctor First Lady.
I think newspapers should be talking more about her work. She has been a consultant with the United Nations Development Programme, Oxfam and other development agencies. The Inquirer did report that she was working with Amnesty International, an organization working for the release of political prisoners. Fernando Lasama was one of those political prisoners and Siapno, who was doing research in Indonesia, visited him in Jakarta, where he was serving a nine-year sentence for subversion.
Love blossomed and they kept in touch by correspondence. International pressure and Amnesty International do get results. Lasama was released in 1998 before finishing his sentence, and married Siapno in his home village in Timor Leste in 2001.
Beyond the First Lady title then, Siapno’s is quite accomplished. Her doctoral research in Indonesia produced a book, “Gender, Islam, Nationalism and the State in Aceh.” She was also associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. She teaches at the Universidade da Paz in Dili.
I’m always telling my students that with all the Filipina nannies raising the children of the world, we’re quietly “colonizing” the world. Don’t be surprised if a few years from now you have leaders of countries talking about their Filipina yaya, maybe even talking in English with an accent from yaya.
Siapno’s story reminds me that even now we already have Filipinos working in government, corporations, non-government organizations, making a difference for their adopted countries—and for the world.
* * *
Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph
Migrant nation
By Rina Jimenez-David
Columnist, Inquirer
Posted date: December 12, 2007
We have much to be grateful for, of course, to the Emir of Kuwait and to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for saving the life of Marilou Ranario. The Emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, for commuting Ranario’s death sentence to life imprisonment, and the President for going out of her way and putting the prestige of her office on the line by meeting with him and personally appealing on the Filipino domestic worker’s behalf.
But it is still only a partial victory, and considering the resources put into the campaign to save Ranario, a most costly one, the full value of which we might still be paying for many years from now.
While Ranario has been saved from execution, she still faces life imprisonment, even if the Emir has promised that once her employer’s family accepts Ranario’s apology and the “blood money,” he could cut her jail term further. But Ranario will not be coming home for some time yet, and to secure her freedom, our government has put the full weight of its prestige and reputation, not to mention its diplomatic leverage, on the line.
The same report that carried news of the Emir’s commutation said overseas workers now contribute $12.8 billion annually in remittances, about 10 percent of gross domestic product. Some even maintain that it’s the money that overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) send home that keeps the economy from teetering over the edge.
OFWs are both the country’s strength and its vulnerability. While they keep our economy afloat, and lift their families here from the trap of poverty, they have also shaped our foreign policy and made it vulnerable to the laws and policies of “host” countries. In many cases, as in Ranario’s, our leaders have also become beholden to their officials, subject to the benevolence of rulers like the Emir of Kuwait or criminals, like the Iraqi militants who kidnapped Angelo de la Cruz.
* * *
This is not the first time that the Philippines, either through the government itself or private donors, has paid “blood money” to the families of individuals who died at the hands of an overseas Filipino worker.
The first case I remember is that of Sarah Balabagan who was convicted of stabbing her male employer (she claimed she did so in self-defense during an attempted rape) and was “ransomed” from her prison through a prominent businessman’s donation. Upon her release and repatriation, she was brought around the country, achieving the status of a folk heroine. A movie was even made about her plight, though its commercial release was delayed because of political and diplomatic considerations. Sarah even made a stab at show business herself.
Government officials and even business leaders scrambled to save Sarah mainly because they had learned from the painful execution of Flor Contemplacion, who was hanged in Singapore on charges of killing her ward, despite the representations of the Philippine government and even the emergence of a witness who told a contradictory story. Contemplacion’s death seemed to touch a nerve here, leading to widespread protests and the dismissal of some officials.
And yet responses to such crises like that of Flor Contemplacion, Sarah Balabagan and now Marilou Ranario take on something of an ad hoc nature. True, it is difficult to predict the way people subject to such tremendous loneliness, isolation and dislocation as our overseas workers would react to stresses. And thus it would be difficult to prepare sufficiently for every exigency. But should every crisis be resolved only through direct intercession of the President?
* * *
An article in the Los Angeles Times describes current Philippine policy on overseas labor as a “vicious migration trap,” with some 11 million Filipinos overseas enduring “a life of lonely, risky sacrifice.” And yet, even if remittances keep the economy afloat, most observers concede that the policy of encouraging labor exports has not led to prosperity, despite more than 30 years’ and two generations’ experience.
The same article concludes that indeed labor export has become a “formula for stagnation,” with government growing increasingly dependent on earnings from abroad while failing to make the necessary investments in education, health and job generation.
A recent study has found that government’s neglect and spendthrift ways are mirrored by the families left behind by OFWs. Most of the money sent home, it was found, has gone to buy consumer goods, instead of being funneled into productive investments, including education.
* * *
Fortunately, there was another OFW story recently that shows how OFWs and the families they leave behind can maintain the ties that bind them and help society in the process.
For every child or spouse feeling resentment at being sacrificed on the altar of prosperity, there is an OFW suffering from intense loneliness and perhaps resentment, too, at being seen as merely a meal ticket and supplier of imported goods.
To this, says Corazon Atuel whose husband Eugenio works as a ship captain, the antidote is frequent communication and treating each other and their seven children as “friends.” The Atuels join two other families recognized as “Model OFW Family of the Year,” a belated nod to the role that the family plays in the success of an overseas worker.
Perhaps we can extend the model of the Atuels and other families to the nation as a whole and to our migrant population. We need to keep our OFWs within the bosom of national concerns, view them as an essential part of national life and stop treating them merely as sources of remittances. As family members and as a nation, we must send our loved ones abroad and invest their earnings wisely so that in the future there may no longer be any need for them to leave.
Columnist, Inquirer
Posted date: December 12, 2007
We have much to be grateful for, of course, to the Emir of Kuwait and to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for saving the life of Marilou Ranario. The Emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, for commuting Ranario’s death sentence to life imprisonment, and the President for going out of her way and putting the prestige of her office on the line by meeting with him and personally appealing on the Filipino domestic worker’s behalf.
But it is still only a partial victory, and considering the resources put into the campaign to save Ranario, a most costly one, the full value of which we might still be paying for many years from now.
While Ranario has been saved from execution, she still faces life imprisonment, even if the Emir has promised that once her employer’s family accepts Ranario’s apology and the “blood money,” he could cut her jail term further. But Ranario will not be coming home for some time yet, and to secure her freedom, our government has put the full weight of its prestige and reputation, not to mention its diplomatic leverage, on the line.
The same report that carried news of the Emir’s commutation said overseas workers now contribute $12.8 billion annually in remittances, about 10 percent of gross domestic product. Some even maintain that it’s the money that overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) send home that keeps the economy from teetering over the edge.
OFWs are both the country’s strength and its vulnerability. While they keep our economy afloat, and lift their families here from the trap of poverty, they have also shaped our foreign policy and made it vulnerable to the laws and policies of “host” countries. In many cases, as in Ranario’s, our leaders have also become beholden to their officials, subject to the benevolence of rulers like the Emir of Kuwait or criminals, like the Iraqi militants who kidnapped Angelo de la Cruz.
* * *
This is not the first time that the Philippines, either through the government itself or private donors, has paid “blood money” to the families of individuals who died at the hands of an overseas Filipino worker.
The first case I remember is that of Sarah Balabagan who was convicted of stabbing her male employer (she claimed she did so in self-defense during an attempted rape) and was “ransomed” from her prison through a prominent businessman’s donation. Upon her release and repatriation, she was brought around the country, achieving the status of a folk heroine. A movie was even made about her plight, though its commercial release was delayed because of political and diplomatic considerations. Sarah even made a stab at show business herself.
Government officials and even business leaders scrambled to save Sarah mainly because they had learned from the painful execution of Flor Contemplacion, who was hanged in Singapore on charges of killing her ward, despite the representations of the Philippine government and even the emergence of a witness who told a contradictory story. Contemplacion’s death seemed to touch a nerve here, leading to widespread protests and the dismissal of some officials.
And yet responses to such crises like that of Flor Contemplacion, Sarah Balabagan and now Marilou Ranario take on something of an ad hoc nature. True, it is difficult to predict the way people subject to such tremendous loneliness, isolation and dislocation as our overseas workers would react to stresses. And thus it would be difficult to prepare sufficiently for every exigency. But should every crisis be resolved only through direct intercession of the President?
* * *
An article in the Los Angeles Times describes current Philippine policy on overseas labor as a “vicious migration trap,” with some 11 million Filipinos overseas enduring “a life of lonely, risky sacrifice.” And yet, even if remittances keep the economy afloat, most observers concede that the policy of encouraging labor exports has not led to prosperity, despite more than 30 years’ and two generations’ experience.
The same article concludes that indeed labor export has become a “formula for stagnation,” with government growing increasingly dependent on earnings from abroad while failing to make the necessary investments in education, health and job generation.
A recent study has found that government’s neglect and spendthrift ways are mirrored by the families left behind by OFWs. Most of the money sent home, it was found, has gone to buy consumer goods, instead of being funneled into productive investments, including education.
* * *
Fortunately, there was another OFW story recently that shows how OFWs and the families they leave behind can maintain the ties that bind them and help society in the process.
For every child or spouse feeling resentment at being sacrificed on the altar of prosperity, there is an OFW suffering from intense loneliness and perhaps resentment, too, at being seen as merely a meal ticket and supplier of imported goods.
To this, says Corazon Atuel whose husband Eugenio works as a ship captain, the antidote is frequent communication and treating each other and their seven children as “friends.” The Atuels join two other families recognized as “Model OFW Family of the Year,” a belated nod to the role that the family plays in the success of an overseas worker.
Perhaps we can extend the model of the Atuels and other families to the nation as a whole and to our migrant population. We need to keep our OFWs within the bosom of national concerns, view them as an essential part of national life and stop treating them merely as sources of remittances. As family members and as a nation, we must send our loved ones abroad and invest their earnings wisely so that in the future there may no longer be any need for them to leave.
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