Over 800 workers stranded as official decamps to India

Around 800 Indian labourers are struggling to survive in UAE labour camps without electricity or running water as the managing director of the company that hired them has left for India, a report has said.

According to a report in The National, employees of Atlantic Emirates Group, a Dubai-based umbrella company, living in Sharjah labour camps have not been paid for six months. "It was not unusual for us to be paid after two months of work," Sunil Challil, an electrician who has worked with the group for five years, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

"So we waited but after we stopped working completely, we got worried," he said.

The firm had several businesses in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah, including real estate management, construction, engineering, securities and cleaning services. The company also had businesses in India, including travel services, plantations and a stone-crushing unit in Kerala.

Of the company's 1,400 workers, about 800 are Indians, the rest are from Bangladesh and Pakistan. Officials from the Ministry of Labour have visited the camps several times since March, when the workers lodged a complaint, to determine the men's travel plans, the report said.

On April 18, the ministry sent home 115 Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. Another 30 workers from India were sent home yesterday. The Indian Consulate said the Ministry of Labour was arranging to get the labourers as much of their back pay as possible.