Paradise
ABU DHABI (MarketWatch, June 26, 2009) — Abu Dhabi. Dubai. Financed by oil, built with toil. Serious, sweaty toil.
It’s approaching summer here, which means temperatures that will rise close to 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) and humidity reaching 90% (no conversion needed there).
There’s what could be an urban legend here that the government never allows the weather bureau to announce we’ve hit 50 degrees because then contractors would have to give laborers a break, get them out of the heat. I don’t know if that’s true: I’ve never seen the law myself, and don’t know anyone who has.
The government did come under a bit of heat this spring, though. Human Rights Watch, the rights watchdog from New York, paid a visit to Abu Dhabi,
specifically to Saadiyat Island, the capital city’s cultural showcase, which will feature Louvre and Guggenheim outposts, and accused the companies building
the museums of abusing their laborers. Also planned for the island are a branch campus of New York University, a performing-arts center, residential complexes and top-end hotels. Construction on the Louvre began in May. Work on the Guggenheim begins this year. Neither is expected to be finished before 2013.
Among HRW’s claims: Workers live in dingy housing camps, labor in high heat and humidity, work long hours, have poor health-care plans (if any) and have
their passports taken away from them by their employers. A report prepared by the group said “a cycle of abuse … leaves migrant workers deeply indebted,
badly paid, and unable to stand up for their rights or even quit their jobs.”
It cited ruthless recruiting agencies that demand exploitative fees for arranging employment to the workers, most of whom come from India, Pakistan, Sri
Lanka and elsewhere in Asia.
Publication of the HRW report came a month or so after “Panorama,” a BBC documentary program, aired a video report of a visit to one of the camps. As you can imagine, they weren’t pretty pictures. I haven’t been inside one of the buildings myself, but I drive by them regularly enough. The road to my
daughter’s high school takes me by a camp. It ain’t pretty: Single-story shacks stand conjoined in 10-deep rows. They are made of various construction elements: concrete, wood, metal. They had been painted at one point. Rusting satellite dishes litter the dusty ground. Uniform shirts and pants of faded blue, green and gray hang listlessly on clotheslines. There’s not a tree in sight.
The U.A.E. was quick to answer the HRW and BBC claims. A government minister invited reporters on a tour of a camp, inspected more than 1,800 camps and work sites — and itself found that employers commonly paid their workers late or cut wages. It then announced plans to build better accommodations. And the Tourism Development and Investment Co., which is constructing Saadiyat Island’s museums, is building a village it described as “one of the most advanced accommodation and living facilities for construction workers in the Middle East.” The village’s first residents arrive in July.
The TDIC said employers are not supposed to be seizing passports and are encouraged to pay workers promptly. Also, it said it would take the HRW up on
its suggestion to provide contracts in a worker’s native language rather than either Arabic or English.
A senior Labor Ministry official, Humaid bin Demas, announced that the U.A.E. plans to establish a special labor court, encourage “model” housing and allow workers to switch jobs if their employers don’t pay them for two months.
I know. I know. To Western ears and eyes, such promises to improve the lot of laborers sound laughable, if not outrageous.
Abu Dhabi and Dubai pretty much shot up out of the desert and, quite literally, into the air overnight, and it is clear that none of it — not one block of it — would have been possible without the backs of laborers. To fault the sheikhs who run the place, who have controlling interests of the companies building or financing the building of the museums and the hotels and the villas and the office towers, however, is unfair to them and not a true picture of reality. Westerners, as investors and expatriate workers here, have benefited as well. Play the game, share the blame.
The cliché that Rome wasn’t built in a day is more than applicable here, however: The U.A.E. turned 37 in December. (I don’t need to remind anyone, but I
will anyway, about the peculiar institution in place in the United States when it was just 37.) The U.A.E.’s a young country with loads of money, speeding
along in terms of development and aspirations, trying to catch up to the West. There are hopeful signs: One is the newspaper I work for, the first attempt by
Abu Dhabi to create a Western-style objective newspaper and freedom of the press. Believe me when I write that there are people here who’d rather not see
the National on the newsstands. But in such a country as this, change comes from the top, and the top decided it wanted and needed a free press. In the same way, when the TDIC and Ministry of Labor say change is coming to the way laborers are treated, it’s going to happen. These bodies did not make statements to make HRW go away. Change will not happen overnight, and people will holler about it, but change will come.
It will not come without help, however. The HRW report was helpful: It was a clear reminder that the world is watching. The editorial stance of the National
is helpful as well: continual, guiding nudges. In an editorial June 24, on the day that it was reported that the number of cases heard in the U.A.E. labor
court so far this year — 2,658 cases — is triple the number of cases heard in the corresponding period last year, the paper asked: “Are more companies failing to treat their workers fairly, or is the legal system getting better at rooting out unacceptable practices?” Then it answers: “Where there are problems, the first step has to be exposing them to the light of day.”
Those institutions interested in setting roots here can help by working with the government, the financiers, the contractors, the subcontractors, to see to
it that the rights and welfare of workers are safeguarded. It’s in everyone’s best interest.
Empty promises
ABU DHABI (MarketWatch, March 3, 2009) — Eighteen months ago, I was standing by a window in the Marina Mall, looking out toward Lulu Island’s sandy beaches. A new acquaintance was standing by my side. He said, “A year from now you won’t recognize it.”
Behind us, work was still going on in the enclosed space that would eventually house a bunny slope, maybe about a third the size of the ski hill at the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai.
Christian himself had been in Abu Dhabi less than a year at that point, working on a sewage-treatment plant. He pointed out road and housing construction behind the mall. “All of this is new from when I arrived.”
He was right. Things do change fast here.
In the short time I’ve lived in Abu Dhabi, I’ve seen buildings come down and a lot more go up. The F1 Grand Prix race is to be run Nov. 1 on Yas Island. When I first arrived, the Abu Dhabi race was still a Montreal race. Six months ago, it seemed construction would never catch up, but it has. It surpassed
expectations, I guess you could say. At the height of construction, more than 41,000 people worked on Yas Island, logging more than 184 million hours to
finish the project. The local Guggenheim and Louvre are to open in 2013, and I have no doubt someone will throw enough labor at them to see that the museums are built on time.
Although the financial crisis has shelved many projects, construction on other projects, not just F1-related, has continued apace. Apartments that were
hard to come by when I first moved here are now easier to find. If you’re willing to pay the rent. In fact there are enough buildings going up in our own
neighborhood of Al Manasir that my wife and I, craning our necks to look out the windows of our little Honda Jazz, wonder aloud: “Who’s moving into these
things?”
Indeed, who?
The office vacancy rate in Abu Dhabi right now is a pretty healthy 5%. In Dubai, however, the vacancy figure is closer to 25%. And those rates will probably go up between now and 2011 when those buildings that are going up around us finally are completed. In fact, some brokers think half of the office space in Dubai might be empty in two years’ time.
A similar phenomenon is in evidence in Dubai’s residential-property sector. The reason apartments and houses are easier to find right now is that there are
more of them — and fewer people to take them. With foreign investors packing up because of the financial crisis, the construction boom of the past six years has found itself alone in the room. There’s a lot less demand for apartments, a situation that can only get worse when tens of thousands of additional units
come on to the market. Colliers International, a property consultant, figures there’ll be 34,000 additional new homes in Dubai alone in two years, an
oversupply that means whatever recovery one might have expected in property prices is that much farther away.
In Abu Dhabi the situation is different, and some analysts are even predicting a housing crunch in the capital in the next four years because the financial crisis has meant there’s less coin to build needed housing.
Referring to the situation in Dubai, Colliers’s director of research, J.P. Grobbelaar, was quoted in the the National newspaper as saying: “We see no reason to believe this will improve; it should actually worsen. Unless there’s a significant increase in population over the next two years, we expect these vacancy levels to increase.”
Not thrilled with high life
The Indian government has relocated slum dwellers to high-rises in urban areas to solve a growing housing problem. But some apartment dwellers have good
reason to miss their old living arrangements, Jackie Range reports.
That there are fewer people in Dubai and in the capital is the result of layoffs and job cuts amounting to a population shift away from the U.A.E. of about 5.5%, EFG-Hermes Holding estimates. In Dubai, Jones Lang LaSalle, a real-estate firm, and UBS, the Swiss bank, both said that figure could be as
high as 10%.
All of this means lost revenue for developers and landlords, of course. Dubai home prices have gone down 48% since their peak last year, Deutsche Bank
reported in June. A further drop of about 20% is now expected by the end of 2009.
Tallest among those empty towers is syringe-shaped Burj Dubai, which will apparently be standing alone for some time, and not just because it’s the world’s tallest tower. Investors in the Burj Dubai complex, which the government-owned developer Emaar had hoped would include 13 other high-rises, have moved their down payments, through the bizarre trade of property credits in Dubai, to other Emaar projects that have a better chance of being built.
If there’s a silver lining in this cloud, it’s that the expected new square footage of office space and apartments and houses is actually lower than what had been planned. If developers had gone ahead with their projects — global financial crisis be damned — can you imagine where they’d be in two years?
That’s a question that’s being asked nevertheless.
And some analysts are not worried. Yes, there might be an office vacancy rate of 50% in two years, agreed Nicholas Maclean, managing director of CB Richard Ellis, but the quality space, the top-dollar space, will be filled. It’s also possible that when office rental prices drop low enough, foreign companies will return looking for cheap places to set up shop — and with them will return the people needed to run the companies and fill all those empty houses.
Neat how cycles work, eh?
Except this cycle seems more like a roller coaster, and, for a lot of people, this phase is the stomach-in-your-esophagus part of the ride. It’s easy enough
to understand why, particularly in Dubai, which is saddled with outstanding debt to the tune of $85 billion. Rating agencies don’t take too kindly to such debt
when they can’t see through that cloud. Mid-October, Standard and Poor’s said Dubai had only $4 billion to support its government-related entities (most of
them involved in property) with a $3.5 billion bond repayment due in the middle of next month. “From our point of view, that’s insufficient,” S&P credit
analyst Farouk Soussa said.
For other people, though, it seems things are just looking up, up, up — and I don’t mean the heights of empty towers or the mountains of debt. Toward the
end of October, some representatives of the finance department in Dubai went on a meet-and-greet to attract potential investors to an international bond sale.
There’s a good chance Dubai will manage to sell new bonds, considering the high yield of emerging-markets debt, and because it has managed to refinance or pay off all the bills that have come due this year. Most of this, however, is because of loans from the Abu Dhabi-supported Central Bank. The operative word being “loans.”
The commercialization of Ramadan
ABU DHABI (MarketWatch, Sept. 11, 2009) — The guys who work at the falafel joint down the street from the newspaper office don’t know my name, but they know my face. They always seem happy to see me. And when I introduced my wife and daughter to Mr. Samir and some of the workers, it’s like we all got adopted or something.
I visit the restaurant, which is no bigger than a small bedroom, about once a week for a “falafel normal” — two falafels crushed into an open pita, topped
with chopped cucumber, tomato and lettuce, and tahini. It costs me less than a U.S. dollar.
One evening late last week, I waited until the call to prayer that announced the end of the daily fast for Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. There was no point
in going over before that. The restaurant would be closed or not ready to serve. I got there at about five minutes to 7. Salah, the manager, in his mid-40s with
streaks of white in his Omar Sharif-black hair, was sitting at one of two small round tables he had brought together. He had a spread of rice, chicken, grilled
vegetables and a salad in front of him. I hadn’t seen him for three weeks because I’d been on vacation. He greeted me like the long-lost customer that I was and asked me to sit down.
This is normal. I sit. I order my sandwich. While he’s making it, he offers me a falafel fresh from the fryer. The warm oil soaks into the tissue he’s wrapped it in. That night, however, and over my polite remonstrations, he gave me a spoon, went behind the counter and came back with a heaping plate of rice and chicken. He called out to his co-worker, Ahmad, who brought out a chicken thigh and leg and a salad. I declined his offer of a Pepsi. I dug in, even though I hadn’t wanted such a meal and didn’t think I had room for it, even though I myself had gone without eating most of the day.
Then Salah was gone. And Ahmad was gone. And I was alone eating this generous iftar meal. And I hadn’t even placed my order.
When I found Ahmad, having a cigarette (which he had to have been craving, since smoking is not allowed during the fast, either), I asked him for a couple
of falafel sandwiches. I explained that I had to be getting back to work. He scooped up my plate of rice, the chicken and the salad, and he took them to the
kitchen area, where he heaped more rice and more salad onto a plastic plate and wrapped the whole thing up along with my leftovers with some aluminum foil.
Salah came in as I was leaving and said, “My wife.”
To which I nodded and asked, “Yes?”
He made a motion with his hand and arm as to signify flying. “Canada?”
“Oh! My wife! Yes. She’s in Canada. She comes back Sept. 5. School starts Sept. 8.” I realized I was off by a day on the return, but having displayed an
elaborate five fingers and then eight fingers in the air-sign-language routine, I wasn’t about to correct myself.
I asked, “How much?” as I fingered the dirhams in my wallet. I was ready to tip well, considering he and Ahmad had just given me this meal.
He looked at the table where the bags were. “Twenty-seven.”
Oh, I guess I’m paying for my iftar meal after all. Two falafels alone would be 7 or 8 dirhams (the price fluctuates daily according to whim).
I couldn’t very well argue that I shouldn’t be paying for a meal that I had not asked for. But, then, I didn’t want to embarrass the guy, either. And besides, I could use the leftovers for lunch the next day. I gave him 30 dirhams (a bit over $8). He tried to give me back my change. I insisted. ” Shokran ,” I said. “Thank you.”
What I forgot to say was, ” Ramadan kareem .” A blessed Ramadan.
Ramadan is the Muslim holy month. Practitioners of the faith fast from just before dawn, about 4:15 in the morning, until about 6:45 in the evening, with the last call to prayer (during this month, there’s yet another, final call, but the important one is the one just after sundown). At this point, Muslims are free to eat and drink; smoke; and have, talk about or imagine sex. It sounds rather overwhelming, like a child’s list of “don’t do’s.” But it is supposed to be a time of clearing one’s body and mind from all worldly things and concentrating on the things that matter: namely, God. People tend to stay up rather late, breaking their fast with the iftar meal with family, friends and, more and more, business contacts. They sometimes stay awake until suhor , the pre-fast meal. Then they go home and crash for a few hours. Work hours change. Many shops do not open until late in the day, and then close for a few hours in the evening before reopening.
Last year, I remember the Marina Mall, the largest in Abu Dhabi, not opening until 7 p.m. My wife and daughter arrived from Montreal on the first day of
Ramadan, and they spent a good part of that month waiting until nightfall to rush over to Ikea to pick up things for the apartment. The mall was packed. The
posted opening hours for some stores stretched until 1:30 a.m. The major grocery stores open at their normal hours but stay open until after midnight.
Ramadan, then, has a flipside. As much as it is supposed to be a holy time of year, there is no escaping its crass commercial side. In that sense, it’s a bit
like the month before Christmas back home. At the end of Ramadan, there is the Eid al Fitr holiday, a three-day festival to mark the end of the fasting month.
That is a bit like the trifecta of Christmas Eve, Christmas and Boxing Day.
There is supposed to be a spirit of charity, as well. So at the entrance to some stores, you see men collecting for the Red Crescent Society and other Muslim or Arab charities. During Eid, food is collected for the poor. Several mosques and palaces open their doors during Ramadan to people who can’t otherwise afford a decent iftar meal.
The daily fast is typically broken with juice and dates. We face no shortage of dates in the United Arab Emirates, where about 50 different types are grown.
Afterward, the meal is festive, featuring whatever you might normally eat but more of it: chicken, lamb, rice, fattoush, hummus, stuffed grape leaves, olives,
soups, tagines.
Although the cost of some foodstuffs has risen in the past month, Muslims marking Ramadan in the United Arab Emirates this year are blessed with lower
food prices than last year. The Ministry of Economy said prices have fallen between 20% and 30% — mostly because oil prices have dropped since a year ago.
Granted, food prices had fallen on their own quite a bit when, in July, the whole world was nervous about the rising costs of foodstuffs, prompting several
emergency international meetings and the toppling of the government in Haiti. Inflation here is down as well. Last year, we posted a rate of 12.9%. For the
first half of 2009, the U.A.E. inflation rate was 3.4%.
That said, the U.A.E. claims it was its own planning that kept the cost of food down. Perhaps. The ministry signed deals with 62 supermarkets in the country to cut the costs of meat, fish and vegetables by as much as 40%, and with suppliers as well.
The costs are down; I suppose how and by whose order or by which economic factor doesn’t much matter to the consumer. Should they go up in October,
however, then I guess we will know Ramadan kareem has a bit of the deus ex machina element to it.