Moreover, many of the newer and poorer countries on the planet (or older South Sea islands of the Pacific, such as Fiji) even have diplomatic representation in the region.
Olson continues, “Self-censorship by the workers also plays a role. Workers endure exploitation, unspeakable hardships and privation. They accept their misfortunes in the hopes that the exchange rates compensate their self-denial in the end.”
In Kuwait hundreds of thousands of laborers are expected this very 3-day National Holidays (24 to 26 February) to be forced to work throughout each holiday as the Kuwait’s celebrate the nation’s founding 47 years ago (on 25 February 1961) and mark the independence of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation on 26 February 1991.
This lack of recognition of the poorer masses who keep the country running on the most important national holidays in Kuwait symbolizes an endemic problem of “faceless worker-hood” and “faceless poverty” in Kuwait.
“FACELESS POVERTY” & “FACELESS WORKERS” ALL AROUND US
To tell the truth, faceless poverty and lack of recognition before the law by the poorest subject classes on a global stage (i.e. with all in search of work and existential realization of dreams) is not simply a Kuwaiti phenomenon.
Moreover, Kuwait actually apparently has better labor protection on the books than other countries—even if they are not often and vigorously applied in fact.
Meanwhile, in the UAE, the darling of the investment world for this past decade, the city state of Dubai has a worse reputation for treatment of its poor construction workers than does Kuwait.
Human Rights Watch has stated that even recent draft laws to protect laborers “fall far short of international standards for the rights of workers.”
Dubai’s courts marked the city’s February 2008 Shopping Festival ( big tourist draw in the Gulf) by sentencing 75 Indian laborers to 6-months in prison and expulsion from the country for striking in a land that doesn’t even allow any labor organization for its ill-treated foreign laborers.
To be fair, the phenomena of the migrating “faceless poor” is also somewhat common in North America and North American entities doing business abroad to some degree, too.
Olson reminds us, “Faceless poverty is not limited to any one country of origin. It is seen on Camp Arifjan, Kuwait where American military personnel leave their Taco Bell burrito wrappers and other refuse to be picked up by locally contracted Pakistani cleaning help. It is seen in the stockyards or on South 24 Street where groups of migrant workers wait to be picked up to cut lawns or remodel homes in Omaha, Nebraska.”
However, the source of the problem of the “faceless poor” isn’t only lack of statistics and lack of access to rights and justice.
According to Dr. Olson, the source of his concern with Kuwait’s approach to the poor and poverty, is the pervasive “reticence and self-denial [that] allow Kuwaiti society to go unchecked in absolving itself of any wrongdoing.”
MY CAVEAT
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