Camp conditions in Bahrain questioned

Workers in the Diraz camp earn around US $159 (BHD60) a month, the standard wage for unskilled labourer in Bahrain. For this they work seven days a we

“The government needs to arrange some open land to build accommodation for the labourers, but nobody helps us,” says Manama councillor Abdulmajeed Alsebea.

“Up until now the government says the land is expensive and the contractors should provide the land, but this is not happening, the only way it will work is in partnership with the government.”

Alsebea is the head of a technical committee which has developed a 15 to 20 year plan to build several “labour cities” around Bahrain which would include an array of amenities from supermarkets to temples to cinemas. 

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Not only would labourers be given safer and healthier environments to live in, but it would also slowly remove the influx of “expat bachelors” from traditional Bahraini residential areas – the main priority for the municipality.

“There are big cultural differences between the way we live and we don’t want these bachelors living in our family areas,” said Hussain.

“In Manama there are more than 100,000 Indian bachelors – this is a demographic bomb and the biggest concern is that we are losing our identity in our own villages.

“This demographic shift is very important, let alone the other problems like cultural problems, social problems and
crime rates.”

In the Diraz camps these tensions have manifested into harassment and violent attacks on labourers from locals.

The workers say locals regularly start fights, throw stones at them and steal and burn their clothes. One worker told us he received three stitches after being hit in the head by a rock thrown through the camp’s front window.

In a bid to solve the problem Bahrain’s five municipal councils drafted a law last August which would ban labour accommodation in residential zones. This followed the alleged rape of a six-year-old boy by an Asian worker in Isa Town.

Under the proposed law no landlord would be allowed to rent accommodation to bachelors in certain designated residential areas, but Municipalities and Agriculture Affairs Minister Dr Juma Al Ka’abi has reportedly vetoed the move, saying the issue needed extensive study.

If the law was approved, Hussain admits that it would merely shift the problem to other areas, but he hopes it would also force the government into developing a real solution, such as designated labour cities.

Currently, he believes the government is being held back by influential powers in the construction sector and chamber of commerce who are trying to avoid the  cost of relocating more than 200,000 people.

“It is a great shame for us in Bahrain to have these labourers working so hard, getting paid nothing and living in conditions with no dignity,” says Hussain.

“But most Bahrainis do not agree with this. The contractors are the source of the problem because they are not providing proper wages for these people.

“Unfortunately the government will always support the contractors because they are afraid of losing that sector of industry.”

President of Bahrain Contractors Association (BCA) Needham Kameski says no such influence exists and if it did, they would use it to remove the government’s Bahrainisation policy and the monthly $26 (BHD10) fee that contractors pay for every expatriate worker.

Kameski says these factors are fuelling the demand for illegal visa workers which he claims make up 90% of the people living in poor labour camps.

“These people are runaways and they will accept living 20 people to a room in the heart of Manama,” he says.
“If the government removes Bahrainisation and these fees then it will drastically cut demand for free visa workers and we will see many of the poor labour camps close down.

“Most of the legal contractors have beautiful labour camps as per the labour laws.”

So far there has been no such move from the government, but private Bahraini developer Tameer is currently constructing a labour camp to house 20,000 workers as part of their Bahrain Investment Wharf (BIW) industrial development.

The project is due to be completed by January 2010 and will be twenty times bigger than other labour camps in the
Kingdom.

It is certainly a step in the right direction, but critics say it will go nowhere near solving the problem and with the majority of blocks to be sold to larger contractors, employees of smaller contractors such as those in the Diraz camp will remain out in the cold.