Why is Dubai called a fake city?
Other people in the answers say it because its very “artificial”, due to it going against the climate, its expensive projects and buildings. That is true, but there is reason why Dubai is called “fake”.
This is what people think of Dubai:These are the exploited migrant workers in Dubai. These are the typical living conditions for them.
There are around 9.4million migrant workers in Dubai, mostly from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt. They are paid extremely low wages—what usually happens is, the migrant worker receives an offer from their home country. The offer is of a high wage, which most workers intend to send back to their family. However when they arrive they are made to sign contracts of far lower wage, even though it is illegal under UAE law. This problem is ignored (no surprise here).
Due to their low earning wages they are unable to afford plane tickets home for many, many years. Even if they do, many have their passports taken away by their employers. It is near impossible to leave.
Here is an extract from The Guardian.
“99 women working in the oil-rich nation were interviewed. Some of the women were forced to work up to 21 hours a day, some were not allowed to leave the house, and some were denied sufficient food. Others were beaten. Almost all had their passports taken away.
“The work wasn’t what I expected it to be. It was totally different. I would wake up to start cooking, then cleaning, washing clothes, and then cooking again. No rest, there was just no rest … Because she kept yelling, I cried and asked to go back to agency, but Madam said: ‘I already bought you,’” a 23-year-old Indonesian said.
“My boss started hitting me after two weeks of being there,” another worker from Indonesia said. “She hit me with her fist to my chest. She scraped her fingernails on my neck, and slapped my face. I was bruised on my neck. She sometimes pulled out tufts of my hair.” The worker said she remained there, hoping to be paid, but never was. HRW said some of the abuse amounted to forced labour or trafficking.”
This is hardly uncommon—Dubai has wealth, resources, oil(although it is running out) yet they choose to use it to build glitzy projects like this,
Dubai is building the world's largest man-made lagoon on 40 hectares
For what? To get into the Guiness World Record book? Boost the nation’s ego? Instill patriotic pride? There are thousands of other ways money can be used to improve Dubai, e.g. Stop exploiting migrant workers, fix wealth inequality gap.
Strangely, tourists report that some of the skyscrapers and fancy buildings are…unusually empty. It because so much money is spent on the exteriors, little money is left for the interiors. Of course another factor is that the rent is unsuakly high, but in places like Hong Kong(where rent is even higher), London, etc, you don’t get that kind of “emptiness”.
That’s why Dubai is called “fake”. Because under the 800metre skyscrapers are exploited migrant workers that haven’t seen their family in years and live in horrendous conditions.
Until Dubai fixes this problem I will not be visiting Dubai and allowing them to continue their exploitation by supporting those lurdiculous hotels.
Hey @kashifnaseem, great post! I enjoyed your content. Keep up the good work! It's always nice to see good content here on Steemit! :)
I heard of this in an earlier report a couple years ago. It still surprises me that to this day, that this is still happening. Why hasn't it come up in UN meeting or why has International Rights law have stepped in. That's one thing that's been curious to me. Yea I heard a couple years ago that Dubai's Economics was crashing, but it was a speak no evil see no evil situation. If people didn't talk about the economic crashes, it won't happen. Even tho I think Dubai is a very beautiful city, but with the human right violation with the work force. I dont think I'll visit that city till thoses problems are fixed. One day I wouldn't mind working in Dubai for a couple of months.