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The operating environment here is both an unusual and changing one. Dubai’s dramatic experience of the global recession has been widely reported and there is no doubt that many companies operating here have been significantly impacted by the downturn. There are no official figures about how many workers have lost their jobs (and been sent back to their home countries of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Philippines) but the figure is thought to be in the hundreds of thousands.

The natural assumption is that during a time of tightening belts, labour standards both fall off the agenda and fall in reality – being one of the ‘nice to haves’ in the good times. Aside from the fact that things weren’t great here for labourers in the ‘good times’, the irony is that in recent months attention towards labour issues has actually increased in the UAE.

Beautifully timed was Panorama’s Slumdog’s and Millionaires, closely followed by the Human Rights Watch report on conditions for workers on the Abu Dhabi ‘arts’ island where the Louvre, Guggenheim and New York University are to have second homes. As you will know from our daily newsfeed the local and international media coverage, as well as the activity by the UAE government, has been significant following these exposes. From the introduction of an electronic wage payment scheme to new and improved accommodation standards being announced to the midday working ban being extended, there are some very real and far-reaching initiatives underway.

What are the companies up to amongst all this I hear you ask? Again it seems ironic but many companies are reporting that they are paying more attention to labour management in the downturn. The reason is quite simple – they have more time. The speed of development in the UAE was such that companies struggled to keep up and often key management systems such as health and safety fell to the wayside. Certainly Impactt is connecting with a wide range of companies who see now as the time to strengthen their labour force, implement new systems to effectively manage labour and/or improve the old ones.

A definite highlight for has been delivering training in Hindi to workers on a cement processing site in Dubai’s sister emirate of Sharjah. The sessions on health and safety were focussed on building a risk aware workforce and harnessed participatory training techniques to understand the workers perspective and to find solutions to H&S problems. Great fun was had by all acting out the animated safety stories developed by Build Safe UAE and early feedback from management is that the workers are not only talking about H&S more frequently, they are taking action too.  

But our recent activities have not all been about the UAE. We have been working hard to extend our network across the Middle East and North Africa and are pleased to report that we can now deliver our services in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Tunisia and Uzbekistan.

Like the UAE it is common for companies across the Middle East to import labour from Asia to work in construction, manufacturing, services, the tourist industry and call centres. While there are also government initiatives underway in these countries, the reality is that frequently the cultural and legal frameworks do not always provide for decent jobs.

In the North African countries the migrant worker phenomena is less common, but the ever increasing volume of manufacturing for the European food and garment markets means attention on compliance with local laws is also on the rise.

Impactt are now working with companies in these locations to deliver:

• Forensic, participatory and/or multi-stakeholder assessments of factories, construction sites, farms and distribution centres
• Training for workers and/or management and the labour law, how to communicate with each other or health and safety
• Benchmarking assessments on the conditions for migrant workers – how are migrant workers recruited, transported, employed and repatriated
• Productivity and production incentives projects

So the exciting times continue for Impactt’s MENA office – watch this space for further updates and of course get in touch if you would like to know more.