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nolimitholdem
12th Mar 2010, 13:36
hmmm....this is interesting.

A recent visit to the "I'm Abu Dhabi's Bitch" tower, now officially known as the Burj Khalifa, resulted in some disappointment as the ability to visit the observation deck was closed down. The official story was that it was due to "maintenance". (For two weeks?!) Didn't believe it for a second, any more than one can believe that EK has received "400 referrals of new pilots" from existing staff. Yeah, right.

Sure enough, after one of our colleagues spoke to a maintenance worker brought in to work at the Burj, it seems there was actually something a little more serious with an elevator failing and causing the death of two workers.

Funny, the things you don't read in the Gulf News or 7 Days. I suppose it's hardly news given the cheapness of workers lives and the ones already lost during the construction - those that are even reported, that is - but what's next? The Aquarium at the Dubai Mall leaking, the Palm receding rapidly into the sea, and the phallic symbol being plagued by fatalities...?

All very good illustrations of the mess that this place is, on and off the job. Not quite the glitter that it tries to pretend, I do hope the tipping point is getting close where the rest of the world starts to see through the lies.

Mr Good Cat
13th Mar 2010, 05:26
Funny, the things you don't read in the Gulf News or 7 Days

To be fair to the 7 days, there was an article written in the paper the day before the opening ceremony, supposedly celebrating the achievements of Emaar and the Burj project. The journalist appeared to be a local.

In this article he incorporated several subtle hints that questioned the ethics of the slave labour and the working conditions, wages etc.

The closing line was something along the lines of:

"We asked an Emaar spokesperson to comment of the alleged deaths of the labourers during the construction process, to which they replied, 'it was an INSIGNIFICANT number of deaths'..."

Nice to see some locals have their head screwed on, shame he doesn't have the confidence to dig a little deeper.

ekwhistleblower
13th Mar 2010, 13:54
Sadly pretty much all big projects have similar stories. I know it was long ago but the Hoover Dam construction killed over 100 people during the years it was going up. Here was an article from last year:

Speaking at Intersec in 2008, IOSH president Ray Hurst reported that there are currently around 2.3 million work-related deaths worldwide annually, with the construction industry accounting for about 60,000 of these fatalities. "That is one death every ten minutes occurring in the construction industry somewhere in the world," stated Hurst.

I guess it doesn't matter how much you pay them if you work 2000 feet up there is not much room for error