Times of Oman article on Abused construction workers: Well done Saleh

In a refreshingly honest article a couple of days ago, Times of Oman's reporter Saleh Al Shaibany wrote about the continued abuse of Oman's construction labourers. See here.
Post-post addendum: And great to see Saleh now employed by a local paper, hopefully on a respectable stipend. He is def. the best Omani English reporter I've seen. We need a LOT more Omani reporters (and dare I hope, journalists too) in his vein.

The issues are captured, along with actual interviews with a couple of construction supervisors (although I'm not so sure naming them was a good idea). They point to the lax Government inforcement and inaction by workers' Embassies, as well as the unscrupulous and callous actions of local Omani building contractors.


Photo: Labourers in hazardous conditions are a common site across Oman. (from ILO, photographer P. Deloche


However, I would also blame the people employing these contractors. People, when you are having a new villa built, it's up to you to ensure the workers are well treated. Don't just shrug your shoulders and put it on the contractor. YOU.

Please step up and act - Insist the contractor adhere to the law. If necessary, call the Government officials and complain. Take responsibility. Let's see those oft-cited Omani cultural strengths of fairness to all, kindness, and moral values applied in your own back yard. These poor people are working for you.

If there was ever a case for an NGO to act, this would be a good one. It would be great to see more proactive stuff from the International Labor Organisation too: how about sponsoring some law suits for wrongful death and injury?

I also wish these workers would be allowed to properly unionise - they can't do that under current Omani law.

And well done ToO and Saleh. More please.

Contractors ignore labour rights

Saleh Al-Shaibany
01 December 2010 09:59:55 Oman Time

MUSCAT: Construction labourers are still working and living in appalling conditions across the country as contractors ignore their basic rights while the government inspectors continue to turn a blind eye.

Little has changed in the past 40 years for labourers as most construction site workers still have to live in wooden shacks braving both the smouldering heat during the summers and the winter chill.

The hygiene conditions of most of these sites are non-existent with toilet facilities being just a hole in the ground, a few metres away (in most cases) from the kitchen and the living quarters. Construction debris is strewn all over the place, ranging from sharp brick fragments to rusting steel. Common complaints of the labourers are food poisoning, heat stroke, injuries and fall from scaffoldings.

After hard physical labour and working in hazardous conditions, these workers are paid a pittance. The monthly salary ranges from just RO80 to RO120 with free medical facilities but they have to fork out money from their pockets to buy their own food. “Nobody cares about their welfare, not even their embassies. All of them come from a poor background arriving here to earn money so they could look after their families back home,” Hussein Al Lawati, general manager of Capital Manpower Services, said.
Construction workers in Oman are mostly south Asians, including those who work for companies building bridges and road networks. According to the latest Manpower Ministry statistics, there are 900,400 foreign workers in the private sector in Oman, out of which more than a third work in the construction sector.

Lawati said that the number of labourers is a third of all foreign workers and the figure is increasing every year due to the construction boom fuelled by higher government spending. According to official data, there were 306,150 construction workers in the country by the end of August 2010, a rise of eight per cent compared to August last year.

With the effect of the global financial crisis diminishing, the government is expected to announce a record spending budget of $20 billion for next year’s expenditure buoyed by more oil exports and rising oil prices in the last two years. “The boom is supported by cheap labour and yet, we don’t look after the people who toil all day to help the progress of the country. The government must acknowledge it and make sure that construction workers are given their rights with inspectors regularly visiting sites,” Lawati added.

Prakash Menon, a supervisor of a construction site in Al Khodh, said that he lost a labourer last summer from a fall and another worker broke a leg after a cement mixing machine rolled over. “The summer heat is a big problem, apart from lack of safety equipment like a harness to secure workers climbing the scaffolds. Contractors are also reluctant to buy new equipment even though major accidents occur,” Menon, said.
Ram Kumar, another site supervisor, said that his workers regularly end up in medical clinics from heat exhaustion, food poisoning and breathing problems. The wooden shacks, Kumar pointed out, are a major cause of fire since labourers use them as kitchens as well as sleeping accommodation.

He pointed out at the slimy water accumulated at a corner of his site overflowing to the road. “It is toilet water and the contractor refuses to pay for the weekly removal of the waste water because he wants to save money,” Menon, said.

Lawati said it was about making maximum profit from the construction contracts where contractors cut corners and deny basic rights to their workers. “The biggest culprits are contractors of private villas. The only way it would work is for both the embassies and the government to work together to come up with a law that would punish offending contractors,” Lawati, said.

Charges dropped against reporter A’sem Al-Sheedi on ROP corruption article

In my post-New Year party haze I missed this story, but expat blogger Lord of the Fiord just pointed out that on Jan. 2nd 2010 the Oman Authorities dropped charges against the Omani reporter A'Sem Al Sheedi for slandering the reputation of the ROP, after he refused to name his source for an article accusing ROP officers of corruption and falsifying traffic fines. The story of his arrest was fortunately picked up by international human rights NGO Frontline Defenders.

The original report was unusual as it was published in the Omani Government controlled newspaper, and (deliberately?) leaked documents showed the head of the ROP had instructed the office of public prosecutions to investigate the claim, punish any ROP found to have been acting improperly or, if found to be untrue, to arrest the reporter.

The investigation claimed to have found no evidence of such corrupt practice in the ROP, and thus - surprise surprise - arrested the reporter.

So its a good news/bad news story.

Good news that the original article was published in the first place, and that the ROP felt moved to respond in public. Good news for Al Sheedi that he's had the charges dropped (probably after promising not to do it again).

Bad news that the story was not confirmed as true, as combined with the subsequent charges against a reporter it will serve as yet another disincentive against such investigative stories.

But congratulations A'sem. Don't give up on the reporting. And thanks Lord of the Fiord for spotting it.

I can't help but hope the attention of such international NGOs is acting as a disincentive for the Government to pursue such petty prosecutions. Which bodes well for all of us...



Photo: Charges have been dropped against Omani reporter Asem Al Sheedi, [pic from Frontline Defenders].

Oman: UPDATE - Charges against writer Mr A’sem Al-Sheedi have been dropped.

Front Line welcomes the news that the Oman Police has halted its judicial prosecution of journalist Mr A’sem Al-Sheedi who had been accused of denouncing the police in an article published in an Oman newspaper on 7 December 2009. The article included information on police corruption.

On 2 January 2010, the Oman Police published a statement in local newspapers reporting that they had received a reply from the Attorney General Office (AGO) based on which they consider the case to be closed. The AGO's detailed reply, which was also published with the police statement, concluded that the investigation committee formed by the AGO had not found any evidence of fraud in the traffic police apparatus as claimed by the writer.

Isn't it Ironic? Journalist erased from Omani Newspaper, questioned and deported for ... criticising press freedom in Oman

I'm not very happy writing this blog post, dear readers. Not at all.




I didn't think this would ever happened here. Not these days. And maybe it hasn't.

But... I must offer you the facts. You join the dots.

Here's the story.

A few days ago, I was told anonymously that a newspaper reporter in Oman, a Mr. Arun Solomon, had apparently been summarily arrested, questioned, and deported, along with his family, for [allegedly] writing an opinion piece for a foreign newspaper that was (so we are told - no one can now find it) somewhat critical of Oman's general media performance standards-wise; mentioning at the same time such descriptive phrases as 'the Middle Ages'.

Yeah, right, I thought. (I get this stuff all the time, and its usually false.)

I did, naturally, google Mr Solomon, as you do, and in the process read many of his totally acceptable and harmless opinion editorials here in Oman, and news reports, via the web. I could do that only thanks to his newspaper of employment for some significant duration it seemed, The Oman Tribune.

I didn't find anything a fraction unsafe or political.

yet, I asked around. Why not. Follow through.

Wow.

'Yes' was the answer, 'it's true, but shhhh'.

I still didn't believe it. No way. For mouthing off in an overseas paper? Under what law? About how crap our media is? How can that be seriously considered a state secret? LMAOFOFL

But, now,... when I go back to google and do the same searches for Arun's stuff, and follow the links to the Oman Tribune, I get
'ERROR page not found'.



And if I now go to the index page of the 'Opinion' section of The Oman Tribune, surprise surprise, no mention of Mr Arun Solomon.

Nothing.

It was rather spooky.





Go on. You try finding Arun on the Trib's site now by doing a simple Google Search. Follow any link.

See? Zip. Nada. No one home to the name Mr. Arun Solomon at the old Oman Tribune. Like, I'm sorry, Who?

Even if the Tribune has had an attack of what one might call the Essa Al Zedjali's Alzheimer's; fortunately, the web has a memory of course.

Those www.bing.com and Google spiders and servers are out there surfing the web 24/7, gobbling up it seems even the uneventful web publications of The Oman Tribune.

And funnily enough, they still remember Arun Solomon, and the stuff he wrote for the Tribune!





There's more of his stuff there... you just have to ask Google or Bing for the "cached page" instead of actually going to the link. And there he still is, gainfuly employed at the Tribune as of a few days ago. Its almost like a spooky, virtual previous life/alternative Universe.

You can even still (until they read this and fix it perhaps) do a search on the Tribune's own website for "Arun Solomon" and get a zillion hits.... but try finding the words Arun or Solomon in the links you're offered... and there's nothing.

Which, you know, rather disappointed me. Because, surely we wouldn't deport someone for that? And even worse, try to erase him from history? Its soooo,... Kim Yung Il guys.

And - damn it! - I still haven't even seen what he wrote that was apparently so illegal, ... or if he even did!

And that's sort of weird.... seeing as I'm told he was, as they say, 'assisting ISS with inquiries' non-stop for a week.

Arun has, apparently, now left the country. Maybe. If he was ever here...