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The Middle East Untouchables

I suppose someone, some official body, somewhere knows roughly how many expatriates from the Indian sub-continent are currently working in the Middle East - perhaps not. I am only surmising. But when I worked in Koweit a couple of years ago, and when I looked around the East and North-East areas of this diminutive country, well all I could feature that there were thousands! In fact there is digit diminutive area of Koweit City that looks like downtown New Delhi, and I know what New Delhi looks like, I've been there twice!

So what are those grouping doing here? Are they all employed? Are some illegal aliens? Just what are their status? Well, I can verify you something that does depress me from instance to instance and that is what I am calling the 'New Untouchables'. What is an Untouchable, I hear you ask? An Untouchable is a member of, or should I say, not a member of some of the quaternary Hindoo castes; in another words, an outcast in their society. They were (and still are) famous as Dalits or Harijans. Traditionally Indian society wasis busted up into quaternary castes, or classes, those being:

Brahmans - the priestly or doctrine class
Kshatriyas - or warrior and ruling classes
Vaishyas - the merchants and trading classes
Sudras - peasants and workers

The Untouchable found him/herself even below the Sudra. Let me give you an warning of how dire these peoples' lives are and why they are held in so such contempt in their own land.

If a Hindoo had the occupation of taking chronicle for a living, such as fishing, butchery, disposing of carcasses or tanning leather, then he or she would be thoughtful an Untouchable. If a person's employ participating some occurrence with human emissions such as sweat, urine, feces, or spittle, such as street sweepers or commode cleaners, then they too would be thoughtful to be Untouchables. Also, the activities of a mortal that allow eating meat such as cattle, husbandly pigs, and chickens made them an Untouchable also.

Untouchables today are greatly underprivileged of many rights and activities that are everyday occurrences for higher caste members. Many educational and occupational opportunities are unobtainable to these outcasts of society. These victims of racism are also forbidden to enter temples, most schools, and are not even allowed to draw liquid from the same well where higher castes might draw water. Untouchables are subservient, commonly illiterate, and poverty-stricken, who basically lead a chronicle of daylong humiliation. And it has to be said that higher caste members have inflicted some of this instance upon their fellow human beings over the centuries.

So what is this article all about? Well, here in the Middle East you have a kind of 'unspoken caste' system that is loosely supported along kindred socio-racial-economic lines. You can have the local Semite executive-standing company owner, lubricator executive, or entrepreneur 'sitting at the top' of the system. Following closely is the Semite higher trainer who module commonly have an dweller reporting to him. Then we cascade downbound the various nationalities or ethnic groups: the British (who commonly report to an dweller - it's always been like this) together with dweller and another 'white face' nationalities, Australians for example. Depending on which side of the divide you stand, you module intend the mismatched Egyptian or Lebanese coming near behind.

Coming 'under' these are the 'educated' Indians who would be characterized as the Vaishyas, and I also allow educated Filipinos and Pakistanis who commonly constitute the upper secretarial and technician class in our system. At this level we module encounter another nationalities but for this article we requirement to take a bit deeper into the dirt to reach this New Untouchable.

There is no effort absent from it - when we intend literally intend downbound to street level, we are talking Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans who 'end up' doing all the menial tasks. You module never ever see an Semite doing such sub-human work. This appalling pecking order has existed in the Middle East for 25 years and, when I returned here recently, I saw that things hadn't changed. It is digit thing to deploy these grouping as menial laborers on building sites and for maids to be on call 24 hours a day to their 'masters' or 'mistresses' but when passports are withheld, overtime isn't paid, and 'other abuses' are rife, then things requirement to be addressed.

Now you'd think that it would be bad enough for a street sweeper to be paying a pittance for a day's graft - typical wages would equal to most $0.20/hour for these New Untouchables - but it gets worse. I mean, look at the basic arithmetic. They work a 60-hour week (usually more) x 20 cents/hour = $12.00 per week. Multiply this by 52 and you arrive at the miserable figure of $624.00 per year!

What's worse?

Workers can typically clear US $2,000 to $3,000 in fees for air travel and visas to local recruitment agencies in their bag countries before leaving for the Middle East and, ostensibly, for a meliorate chronicle here. But in the UAE, for instance, this contravenes the Labor Law No. 8 of 1980, which states that such fees should be paying by the employer.

So digit comes across such scenarios as, "I borrowed the equivalent of $2,500 from my brothers and cousins to clear an agency to become to Kuwait." Or, "I've been here for 22 months now and am still paying soured this debt. With the wages we get, it is very difficult to clear our way, clear soured our debts and support our families backwards home,\"

Yesterday, I watched from my apartment window a New Untouchable effort on with his work. His work? Seemingly, his employ was to rise into a garbage resile and vanish all metal and impressible objects. This constituted mostly tin cans and impressible bin liners and traveler bags. Then I got to thinking. I used this resile for my garbage maybe twice a week. So there would be the leftovers from numerous breakfasts, evening meals and weekend snacks, empty milk and matter cartons, dried-up teabags and God knows what else. But when you envisage perhaps a half-ton of stuff baking under 40oC of unrelenting sunshine, then you intend to appreciate why this is an Untouchable's job. And no, he wasn't equipped with grappling mask or gloves! Who else would have the trend gumption to rise into that stinking, decaying morass and earn his $0.20 and hour for so doing?

I module end this article with the maids, those someone Untouchables. Not so such an Untouchable, more a slave. Because I read the daily accounts in the newspapers of shout which these poor, down-trodden human beings have to suffer.

About 15 to 20 percent of the 100,000 Sri Lankan women who leave each year for the Gulf convey prematurely, having faced shout or non-payment of salary, or they intend drawn into illicit grouping trafficking schemes or prostitution. Most of the instance it is easier for them to sell their bodies to make ends meet. Hundreds of housemaids have become pregnant, often after rapes, producing children who, until Sri Lanka's Constitution was fresh amended, were stateless because their fathers were foreigners. And it is no more a secret that at least 100 women convey bag dead each year from Saudi peninsula alone.

One hears of awful stories of maids who are constantly molested in the sponsor's home, sometimes beaten, locked in rooms, underprivileged of matter and liquid - torture in another words. There are stories of maids being burned and having limbs busted and subjected to rape. With regard to Sri Lankan maids, their daylong hair is a source of pride - it is an aspect of Sri Lankan culture dating backwards thousands of years. And yet, some cruel sponsors (masters or mistresses) epilation soured their hair just for the trend hell of it!