Tariq A. Al-Maeena

 

In our society, there is a segment that often goes unnoticed. Occasionally they can be observed when one is driving. They may be seen as they silently  toil on the side of streets and roads often in the heat of the day picking up litter that careless motorists so generously provide.

 

Others can be seen perched precariously on scaffolds working on high rises and taking risks we would not dare to contemplate. There are times when you encounter an army of them busily preparing a road for resurfacing. Or you run into them in restaurants as they cheerfully guide you to your table and serve you your food without much fuss or bother.



 They pump gasoline into our cars; they deliver water to our homes or cart away our sewage in tankers; they tend to livestock and orchards on our farms and fields, and they bag our groceries. They guard our homes or clean the toilets in our malls. These are the unskilled workers from the East.



Unlike their Western or skilled Asian counterparts who enjoy comfortable amenities and accommodations with even more comfortable salaries, these Asian unskilled expatriates could not even dream of such luxuries. Instead, at the end of their long working days, they are collectively bused home in rundown vehicles lacking air-conditioning or comfortable seating.

And when they do retire to their housing compounds, they can look forward to substandard and unworthy dwellings.  And yet they do it without a complaint. They have mouths to feed back home, and they are on a mission to accomplish just that. Their personal comfort is not on the list of their priorities.



We tend to look at them as background fixtures, so used as we are to their presence everywhere.  But these fixtures are human beings with warm blood coursing through their veins, battered by the many forms of abuse they are subjected to, which they accept stoically.



Some are married with young and hungry children. Others have the responsibility of providing for their aging parents or younger siblings. All have come to this part of the world to try to put food on the table for their loved ones back home and provide their families with some comfort and hope that they have denied themselves.



They are the Bangladeshis, the Nepalese and the Filipinos who are an integral part of the machinery that helps run this country. They are Indians, Afghanis, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Burmese, Vietnamese and Indonesians who have accepted this challenge to work in unfamiliar surroundings and they must deliver on their promise. But yet we usually mistake them for background fixtures.



Many are victims of unscrupulous manpower agents or employers, and they find themselves at the end of a worthless contract signed back in their home countries with promises of much higher salaries than they actually get when they come to this part of the world. The packages offered to them to lure them away from the comfort of their loved ones are invariably altered to their disadvantage once they arrive at their destinations, leaving them without many alternatives. 



They have already sold most of their possessions just to pay the avaricious agents for the privilege of booking a seat to the land of riches. And there certainly is not much gold waiting for them once they arrive. Instead, it is hard work and lots of it and under very difficult and oppressive conditions, something the locals would not dare undertake.

 

But it is to them that we must grant recognition; for theirs is a sacrifice like no other, and under conditions unacceptable to most of us. For without them, most of the Arabian Peninsula would still remain a desert. And without them, the machinery that moves us forward would grind to a halt.



How often do we as hosts take the time to think about their living and working environment? How many of us lend a sympathetic ear to their problems? How many of us carry out the charitable task of helping them out in their time of need?



Hail to the unsung and unskilled Asian expatriates. They are not fixtures or shadows in the background. They are worthwhile human beings with wants and needs just like the rest of us. Most of them do not have the means to read these words of recognition. But many of you who do can convey that message to some of them.



 

The author can be reached at talmaeena@aol.com.