$30 billion in remittance annually by foreign workers in the Gulf states
Workers in the six Arab Gulf Cooperation Council states (GCC), whose number tolls 10 million persons, transfer 30 billion dollars annually to their countries, according to the minister of social affairs and labor in the United Arab Emirates Ali Bin Abdullah al-Kabi in statements issued on Thursday in Abu Dhabi.
The UAE minister stressed in a speech he delivered in the consultation conference for Asian labor force in Bali ( Indonesia ) that the "coming labor force to the GCC member states is temporary and not emigrants," stressing the key role played by this labor force in the economic developmental projects and building the basic infrastructure in our countries. He called on "close bilateral cooperation between labor exporting countries and the GCC member states and reaching an appropriate vision to protect the rights of arriving labor and its employees, taking into account problems facing the employers.
This comes following reports stating that about 1000 foreign workers, mostly Indians, walked off their job, and caused a protest because of not being paid for work they were doing in building an artificial island in the UAE. The UAE in that incident had ordered the employer to pay the wages or face penalty. A similar incident took place recently in Qatar.
According to a document By Giovanna Tattolo at the Jean Monnet Observatory on trans-Mediterranean relations (http://jmobservatory.eco.uniroma1.it/home.html), "he percentage of foreigners in the GCC populations systematically grew over the last decades, increasing from 22,9 percent in 1975 to over 38 in the mid-1990 when it levelled. By 2002, about 32,5 million people lived in the GCC. Among them were about 12,5 million foreigners, constituting 38,5 percent of the total population (see table 1). In Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait, foreigners constituted a large majority; in the UAE for istance, foreigners constituted almost 80 percent of the population. In Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain foreigners also made up a substantial portion of the total population: 26-40 percent." The report adds "With the post-1973 economic boom Yemenis, Egyptians, Sudanese, Jordanians/Palestinians, Pakistanis and Indians began to arrive in the Gulf in large numbers.
The report said: "At the beginning the Arab workers were very welcome, but, relatively quickly, the preference of the oil governments changed, and they began to be more open to Asian workers. They were less expensive to employ, easier to lay-off and thought to be more efficient, obedient and manageable.
"Asian workers were also preferable as they were used to leaving their lamilies in their home countries, whereas Arab immigrants usually brought their families to the Gulf with the hope of settling there permanently. This possibility was not acceptable for the GCC authorities.
"Significant changes in the composition of the foreign workforce occurred as a result of the events of the second Gulf War. Iraqis and those supportive of Iraq (including Palestinians, Jordanians, Yemenis and Sudanese) were distrusted and forced to leave the GCC during and in the aftermath of the crisis. All together over 1.5 million people were displaced: up to one million Yemenis were expelled from Saudi Arabia, along 200,000 Jordanians and 150,000 Palestinians, mainly from Kuwait. An additional 158,000 Egyptians left Kuwait in the wake of the crisis.
"The economic effect of the return of a large number of workers from the GCC to their home countries due to developments related to the second Gulf war is unclear and needs further study. Many Arabs who left the GCC during the Gulf war and in its aftermath did not return following the conflict. The resultant vacuum in the labor market, despite the GCC governments’ intentions, was not filled by nationals. Free market dynamics led Asians to take the vacant jobs, again enlarging again their share in the workforce. The workforce has witnessed further change in the 1990s, partly because of the end of the Cold War. Job seekers from China and from the newly independent of the former Soviet Union began to arrive in the Gulf looking for employment opportunities. Cheap to employ and often quite well educated, these migrants created additional competition in the labor market.As a result of the policies adopted in the GCC , the percentage of the expatriate population represented by Arabs in these countries decreased from 72 percent in 1975 to 56 percent a decade later. The exact size of expatriate communities in the GCC is difficult to establish, as authorities often do not reveal information about them. However, the available information suggests that of the 12.5 million foreigners, who lived in the GCC countries in 2002, there were about 3.5 million non-Gulf Arabs, 3.2 million Indians, 1.7 million Pakistanis, almost 1.0 million Bangladeshis, more than 700,000 Filipinos and more than 700,000 Sri Lankans. That is, the number of Asians was more than twice the number of non-Gulf Arabs. The non-Gulf Arab community has been mainly composed of Egyptians (over 1.5 million), Yemenis (1.0 million), Palestinian/Jordanians (0.5 million) and Syrians (0.3 million)."
