Greed

Imagine working hard labor. I mean, REALLY hard labor. Lifting and laying bricks by hand, carrying sand in huge bags and wheelbarrows. Preparing electrical wiring and hammering nails. Now imagine doing it in 125-degree heat in the midday sun on the top of a construction site with no protective gear (hard hat, safety harness, good work boots). Imagine doing this job six days a week, 12 hours a day. And all for less than $200 a month.

Sadly, this is the situation of many, many migrant workers here in Bahrain. Food, clothing and housing here all cost about what you would expect to pay in any average American city of moderate to large size. These workers primarily come from India, Sri Lanka, the Phillipines and other Asian countries. It tells you a lot about their own economies that the jobs they have here put them in better financial positions. I have no idea how these people manage to survive. What is even more amazing is that they are somehow able to support families back in their native countries--yet they are! From what I have been told and read, it is almost unheard of for a Bahraini to work a job like this.

Also unfortunately, because of this abundance of people willing to do grueling work for almost nothing, migrant workers are often mistreated, discriminated against, abused, left unpaid, crammed into tiny, crowded housing camps. Their passports become property of their "sponsor" or employer, meaning they cannot leave the country unless their sponsor allows them to.

Not surprisingly, there are many people profiting from this labor situation. To make matters worse, any time the public raises issues to improve the situation for the workers, businesses lobby against the proposed changes. This year they have made the decree that all employers are required to allow their laborers a break from noon to four in the afternoon through the months of July and August. The heat is at its peak during this time and many workers are exposed directly to the cruel elements. From what I've read in the Gulf Daily News, employers are fighting and opposing this decree. Their solution is to make employees work even earlier in the day and later into the night. Indeed, it is not uncommon for us to see people working at construction sites at 10 PM or later.

Workers often cannot afford transportation of any kind to their job sites, so the companies which employ them will provide them transportation by way of an open truck bed. Because there have been injuries and deaths from overcrowded trucks and people falling out of them, the government decided that they would no longer allow workers to be transported this way. So I have seen some trucks now that have basically been rigged up with boards or tarps to "close" them. Imagine riding in that in sweltering heat! So somebody proposed that companies should be responsible for providing air conditioned, enclosed buses for their workers. Several companies complained that this would be too expensive (yet they pay their workers almost nothing!) and that if the workers went from the air conditioned buses to their work sites, they would become ill from the drastic changes in temperature!

This is an Arab, Muslim country. I'm not sure how the West came to symbolize to some Muslims and Arabs an evil, greedy super-power bent on oppressing the helpless. It is clear to me now that greed most likely exists everywhere in the world. Unfortunately, it seems to be one of the things which is truly cross-cultural.