Striking Laborers - Modern Day Slave Trade

The cleaning guys contracted to work in our office haven’t been paid in 4 months, so they are out today striking. They get 20-24 KD a month. Trust – as in “Trust us not to pay our employees”. Dudes are working for 3-4 months without pay; then when the companies finally do pay them, they only give them 1 month's salary. OMG - I can't imagine how ballistic I would go!

That is so pathetic and disgusting. These cleaning company owners are just slave traders.

How can these workers survive? Has anyone noticed (duuuuh) that the price of food has gone up? The baladiya has been raiding street vendors selling food that is either expired or has been pilfered from grocery stores.

How much food is wasted by others? Damn people – if you don’t eat it at a restaurant (and I see SO many people leaving SO MUCH food on the table), have them package it up; if you see someone on the street digging in a trash bin, hand it to them. If I come back from lunch and I have half a sandwich left, our cleaning dudes are so happy to take it.

Giving to the poor shouldn’t just be during Ramadan. There are needy people all the time.

This is basic stuff: Food, shelter, water.

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During the riots on the night of the 27th, not one person was arrested. If you notice the photos in the papers, the police are shown either calmly talking to the workers, or standing back and observing. The order for the police to conduct themselves in this manner, an order must have come from the top. Unfortunately, riots on the 28th were met with teargas and batons, but still, photos show autorities taking a distanced stance. It appears from the stories that I have seen that workers were only arrested when things turned violent. This is a tremendous step forward for Kuwait with a previous "whack a mole" mentality towards peaceful demonstrations by workers.

I have talked to quite a few Kuwaiti friends about this and they all feel that inhumane treatment of workers in Kuwait is a black mark on the country's reputation. All feel that the government will do something. They should. Most of these guys even have to pay for their own visas and companies still retain their passports - which is illegal, but a lot of places still do. Slavery. If company employees must be paid through electronic funds at banks to ensure a transaction record, and monthly salary reporting must be completed to the MOSAL; then the same should be done for laborers. Banks hate this because they make no money from the transactions and it is more of an administrative headache to them than a benefit.

Better yet, change the labor law that hasn't been revised since 1964.