United Arab Emirates

[raskolnikov]

I am currently looking around for work(teaching) for next year and noticed that there is a big shortage of teachers in the UAE. There is some seriously good money to be made, $100,000 a year tax free and accommodation provided.

The only thing is I don't know whether I could handle living there. Has anyone been there who could shed some light for me?

 

[Brad Goodman]

From what I read there are various laws there that you might disagree with based on information you have freely disclosed previously on this website.

 

[FootyJunkie]

Dubai intrigues, its as if it wants to reach out to the west a bit.... there are shopping malls, bars, high rises etc. yet Islamic law is still very much present there. No showing of public affection or bogan activity would be tolerated there. Will leave it to people that have lived there to say more about it, but I get the impression that if you are form the west, its a place to make some good money but would need to lead a more humble lifestyle. I doubt it would be safe to venture too far away from the city either, beyond Abu Dhabi anyway.

 

[Bombers_Forever]

Anywhere that bans beer is a turnoff........and I am not a drinker either!

Seriously, looks clean, nice infrstructure but I don't think I could live there. I am guessing teaching means minimum of a year? I would miss too many things like footy.

 

[Toriola]

Hope you don't have any moral quandaries about the slave labour that allows the city to function.

There are three different Dubai's, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?

Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out.

Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose name in Hindi means "City of Gold". In the first camp I stop at – riven with the smell of sewage and sweat – the men huddle around, eager to tell someone, anyone, what is happening to them.

Sahinal Monir, a slim 24-year-old from the deltas of Bangladesh. "To get you here, they tell you Dubai is heaven. Then you get here and realise it is hell," he says. Four years ago, an employment agent arrived in Sahinal's village in Southern Bangladesh. He told the men of the village that there was a place where they could earn 40,000 takka a month (£400) just for working nine-to-five on construction projects. It was a place where they would be given great accommodation, great food, and treated well. All they had to do was pay an up-front fee of 220,000 takka (£2,300) for the work visa – a fee they'd pay off in the first six months, easy. So Sahinal sold his family land, and took out a loan from the local lender, to head to this paradise.

As soon as he arrived at Dubai airport, his passport was taken from him by his construction company. He has not seen it since. He was told brusquely that from now on he would be working 14-hour days in the desert heat – where western tourists are advised not to stay outside for even five minutes in summer, when it hits 55 degrees – for 500 dirhams a month (£90), less than a quarter of the wage he was promised. If you don't like it, the company told him, go home. "But how can I go home? You have my passport, and I have no money for the ticket," he said. "Well, then you'd better get to work," they replied.

Sahinal was in a panic. His family back home – his son, daughter, wife and parents – were waiting for money, excited that their boy had finally made it. But he was going to have to work for more than two years just to pay for the cost of getting here – and all to earn less than he did in Bangladesh.

He shows me his room. It is a tiny, poky, concrete cell with triple-decker bunk-beds, where he lives with 11 other men. All his belongings are piled onto his bunk: three shirts, a spare pair of trousers, and a cellphone. The room stinks, because the lavatories in the corner of the camp – holes in the ground – are backed up with excrement and clouds of black flies. There is no air conditioning or fans, so the heat is "unbearable. You cannot sleep. All you do is sweat and scratch all night." At the height of summer, people sleep on the floor, on the roof, anywhere where they can pray for a moment of breeze.

The water delivered to the camp in huge white containers isn't properly desalinated: it tastes of salt. "It makes us sick, but we have nothing else to drink," he says.

The work is "the worst in the world," he says. "You have to carry 50kg bricks and blocks of cement in the worst heat imaginable ... This heat – it is like nothing else. You sweat so much you can't pee, not for days or weeks. It's like all the liquid comes out through your skin and you stink. You become dizzy and sick but you aren't allowed to stop, except for an hour in the afternoon. You know if you drop anything or slip, you could die. If you take time off sick, your wages are docked, and you are trapped here even longer."

He is currently working on the 67th floor of a shiny new tower, where he builds upwards, into the sky, into the heat. He doesn't know its name. In his four years here, he has never seen the Dubai of tourist-fame, except as he constructs it floor-by-floor.

Is he angry? He is quiet for a long time. "Here, nobody shows their anger. You can't. You get put in jail for a long time, then deported." Last year, some workers went on strike after they were not given their wages for four months. The Dubai police surrounded their camps with razor-wire and water-cannons and blasted them out and back to work.

The "ringleaders" were imprisoned. I try a different question: does Sohinal regret coming? All the men look down, awkwardly. "How can we think about that? We are trapped. If we start to think about regrets..." He lets the sentence trail off. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence by adding: "I miss my country, my family and my land. We can grow food in Bangladesh. Here, nothing grows. Just oil and buildings."

Since the recession hit, they say, the electricity has been cut off in dozens of the camps, and the men have not been paid for months. Their companies have disappeared with their passports and their pay. "We have been robbed of everything. Even if somehow we get back to Bangladesh, the loan sharks will demand we repay our loans immediately, and when we can't, we'll be sent to prison."

This is all supposed to be illegal. Employers are meant to pay on time, never take your passport, give you breaks in the heat – but I met nobody who said it happens. Not one. These men are conned into coming and trapped into staying, with the complicity of the Dubai authorities.

Sahinal could well die out here. A British man who used to work on construction projects told me: "There's a huge number of suicides in the camps and on the construction sites, but they're not reported. They're described as 'accidents'." Even then, their families aren't free: they simply inherit the debts. A Human Rights Watch study found there is a "cover-up of the true extent" of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.

At night, in the dusk, I sit in the camp with Sohinal and his friends as they scrape together what they have left to buy a cheap bottle of spirits. They down it in one ferocious gulp. "It helps you to feel numb", Sohinal says through a stinging throat. In the distance, the glistening Dubai skyline he built stands, oblivious.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html

 

[Bosun]

I am currently looking around for work(teaching) for next year and noticed that there is a big shortage of teachers in the UAE. There is some seriously good money to be made, $100,000 a year tax free and accommodation provided.

The only thing is I don't know whether I could handle living there. Has anyone been there who could shed some light for me?

Unless Ive got the wrong poster, your lifestyle wont be accepted and you would get into a lot of trouble displaying it. That alone should have you thinking about exploring other countries.

My sister moved there with her husband and little one, obviously for the massive wages (he is in construction law for a large British Firm) and they both seem to enjoy it without raving about it. Ive been there a couple of times to visit and the one thing that stands out is the heat, Ive lived in Singapore for a while and this is much different, really oppresive stuff where you cant be outside for long at all.

Rent is also very expensive and you wont be saving much on 100k even with the tax free incentive. You can drink there if you like a lager but only in specified places and to buy grog you will need to get a licence which can take around 6 weeks.

All in all its fine however I would want a very high wage to consider it.

 

[peejay]

Be careful where you swim - there is no sewage system.

http://www.boreme.com/posting.php?id=31361

 

[raskolnikov]

Unless Ive got the wrong poster, your lifestyle wont be accepted and you would get into a lot of trouble displaying it. That alone should have you thinking about exploring other countries.

My sister moved there with her husband and little one, obviously for the massive wages (he is in construction law for a large British Firm) and they both seem to enjoy it without raving about it. Ive been there a couple of times to visit and the one thing that stands out is the heat, Ive lived in Singapore for a while and this is much different, really oppresive stuff where you cant be outside for long at all.

Rent is also very expensive and you wont be saving much on 100k even with the tax free incentive. You can drink there if you like a lager but only in specified places and to buy grog you will need to get a licence which can take around 6 weeks.

All in all its fine however I would want a very high wage to consider it.

As far as my "lifestyle" is concerned I am a very straight acting guy. It's not as if I am going to be walking down the street holding hands with my partner.
I'd have to keep my dick in my pants for a year but that's ok. I'm not particularly sexually active at the moment anyway.

Rent is provided so I wouldn't need to pay for that.

Beer also isn't a problem. I like a drink but I am also happy not to. I lived in a dry community in the Northern Territory so am used to that.

 

[J_Moore]

I've known a few people that worked there. They found it really, really boring. It's pretty much something you'd only do for the money, unless the experience of being in a country where you are completely shut off from the locals and living a very compartmentalised existence appeals to you. So I'd just do the sums.

It's dramatically different from working in most other foreign countries, though. There is bugger all native culture to speak of. There's big shopping malls, a lot of expats, a bunch of loaded Emiratis that live in compounds, and then a bunch of poor sub-continentals and Filipinos living in hastily built slums making it all happen.

 

[Scotland]

Yeah, it is a pretty soulless place. Not somewhere you go to work Monday to Friday then explore on the weekends, at least not for very long. There is some interesting engineering & construction, and the weather is nice (part of the year) but you definitely need to make your own fun. It's a bit like Perth really, minus the interesting engineering and construction.

If you are a keen traveller it is fairly well located, though. Emirates connects directly to a large number of European, Asian, African & even North/South American destinations, so if the idea of banking good money then taking trips to destinations that you wouldn't normally just pop over to from Australia then it's worth a look.

 

[glitch01]

Been here 3 and a half years and in no hurry to come home.
Basically have the opportunity to have a good lifestyle and save some cash.
Alcohol is available (but not cheap in pubs and clubs).
Your lifestyle is not that restricted - just don't drink and drive or get drunk and obnoxious.
The majority of people that get in trouble here bring it on themselves.

There is stuff to do - just more restricted in the summer months (50+ degrees in June/July), most people take their annual leave then anyway.
Drawbacks are obviously being away from family and no live footy (although being a Port supporter that mightn't be such a bad thing lately). Seriously though most sport is covered - 2 AFL games a week, cricket is on live.
All in all life here is what you make of it.

 

[Hap Hapablap]

ive been thinking of working there myself. question is i dont know where to start in finding an oppurtunity. any recommendations.

as mentioned earlier dubai is probably the most liberal in the middle east after turkey and lebanon so you can pretty much get up to some things as long as you follow the law. i had a uni class mate with me who was from there and you can pretty much get up to anything as long as you dont get caught.

 

[glitch01]

ive been thinking of working there myself. question is i dont know where to start in finding an oppurtunity. any recommendations.

as mentioned earlier dubai is probably the most liberal in the middle east after turkey and lebanon so you can pretty much get up to some things as long as you follow the law. i had a uni class mate with me who was from there and you can pretty much get up to anything as long as you dont get caught.

I was fortunate enough to get head hunted for my job here in Dubai so never had to search myself.

Having said that www.bayt.com and www.monstergulf.com will give you a starting point in the region anyway.

As I said previously it is pretty laid back here unless you draw attention to yourself.