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

See photos of the terrible living conditions of an unregistered labour camp

There are believed to be around 250,000 unskilled construction workers living in Bahrain and human rights groups say the vast majority live in dilapidated and dangerous labour camps. Bahrain editor Benjamin Millington gets a firsthand account and takes an in-depth look at the issue.

Down a narrow laneway in the Bahraini suburb of Diraz, tucked away amongst a string of modest family villas, is a small unassuming concrete building with a roof of loosely fixed corrugated iron sheets.

To the passer by, it might look like something hastily built to store old tools or use as a weekend workshop. But it is in fact home to 20 migrant construction workers.

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This is one of Bahrain’s unregistered labour camps and there are hundreds of them across the Kingdom according to Migrant Workers Protection Society’s (MWPS) safety and welfare committee head Sathis Kumar.

The camps range in size and shape, but Kumar says they generally have a number of things in common – they are overcrowded, uncomfortable, unhygienic, poorly constructed, dilapidated, and dangerous.

“This used to be a car shed and they just added on some rooms,” says Kumar standing outside the camp in Diraz.
“There are four bedrooms, five people in each room, two toilets and two kitchens, but you cannot even call them kitchens.

“The biggest danger is fire. Every year workers are killed when places like this catch on fire and it can happen so easily.”

Inside the camp there are people everywhere. Some ignore us while others seem grateful for the attention and obligingly point out the hardships.

The kitchens are a collection of dirty cupboards and kerosene fuelled portable stoves. The bedrooms are windowless and overcrowded. The concrete bathrooms consist solely of a toilet and a cold water tap. And the sheet roofing, which has many gaps, offers little protection from the cold, heat, wind, dust and rain.

Overall it’s hard to imagine how 20 men live in such conditions, but Kumar says they are given no other option by their
employers.

The four small contracting firms jointly lease the premises and Kumar says neither them nor the landlord are willing to make improvements.

“We have been coming to this camp for the last 10 years and in that time nothing has changed,” says Kumar.

“Only last year we got the landlord to install air conditioning, that’s it, and it still gets extremely hot in here during summer - it’s a small consolation.”