Dubai labourers protest in low pay row

Hundreds of workers have protested in Dubai over low wages

By Soren Billing

Hundreds of Dubai construction workers took to the streets on Monday to demonstrate against low wages and the lack of overtime pay in the city’s troubled construction sector.

Labourers working for Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises stopped work and halted traffic in Deira and Jebel Ali at around 8am this morning but were quickly dispersed by police and labour officials.

Colonel Abdullah Al Ghaithi, the acting director of the Dubai Police’s organisational safety, told UAE daily Gulf News that 300 workers had taken to the streets and that the Ministry of Labour (MoL) was trying to settle the dispute between the labourers and the company.

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UAE daily The National put the number of protestors in Deira at 2,000.

“All the overtime that we were allowed to do has stopped and our salaries are not enough for us to survive. We are demanding for a raise in the salary,” a worker employed at the Al Ghurair City Centre expansion project told the paper.