|~||~||~|“Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink”.
So says Samuel Taylor Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
This world-renowned author may have written that there was water everywhere. But not, it would appear, on construction sites in Dubai, despite the fact that the world we live in is made up of three-quarters water and just a quarter land.
Not for workers employed by Arabtec Contracting Company, nor for those at Al Hamed Development Company, who have both been badly affected in the past couple of weeks by a lack of that basic human need called water.
The frustration of having no H20 at their labour camp in the Arabian Ranches in Dubai led 3,000 Arabtec labourers to damage cars and heavy plant machinery, pull down camp fences and smash computers.
The reason? The camp had no permanent water supply after the vans transporting the water tanks were delayed. Only for 30 minutes mind, but when you are tired and thirsty, that is still half-an-hour too long.
Just as worrying, were reports last month that Muslim workers from Al Hamed were unable to carry out their daily prayers because they were unable to wash their hands.
“It’s quite ironic,” said one, “ we’re in a Muslim country and yet we’re unable to fulfill our religious duties over something as basic as water to wash with.”
The damage caused to an individual who wants to pray five times a day, yet cannot even do it once cannot be underestimated.
As writers on Construction Week, the team is invited to visit many sites as part of our day-to-day job.
But in most cases we are lucky enough to be able to negotiate a time when we arrive on site, and in the vast majority of cases, that is as far away as possible from being in the midday sun.
Labourers, however, do not have that luxury, and apart from two months a year when they are banned from working in the heat, they are on site from early in the morning until late at night.
After a hard day’s graft, surely the least they can expect is water to wash their filthy clothes with and to soak away those aches and pains.
Medical experts are forever warning us that to keep healthy we must drink at least two litres of water a day.
As temperatures nudge towards 45 degrees celsius in the coming months, contractors must start doing all they can to heed this advice.
Tim Wood
Deputy Editor||**||
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