Cyprus-Forum.com

[supporttheunderdog]

Yes and the treat non nationals like sh!t, in particular the migrant workers who do all the dirty jobs.

[Paphitis]

Yes and the treat non nationals like sh!t, in particular the migrant workers who do all the dirty jobs.

Not true!

Westerners and Europeans are well treated, particularly if they are qualified and bring something to the country.

Then you got the other foreigners, like the Indians, Pakis, Bangladeshi etc who do the jobs that are beneath the Arabs. Also foreign maids, usually from third world countries like the Philippines, and Russia.

I see nothing wrong with it. They got their priorities set the right way!

[Paphitis]

BHP Billiton and Woodside Petroleum named in the Panama scandal.

yes little children, 300 Billion dollar companies, given the responsibility of publicly owned by the people resources in the ground and under the ocean, have been implicated.

And the worker get's ripped off with tax, to pay for roads, schools, and health.

On the other hand, we have the Arabs! 0% Tax, and every citizen given universal health and a free education, plus free land from the Sheikh himself.

Sure the Royal family is super wealthy from the resources belonging to the people. BUT, they also look after their people, build infrastructure and 7 star hospitals and every citizen has a right to employment in one of their Government Departments or Services. It's a right! Socialism? I don't think so say's the dumb Guardian reader.

must be because they believe in a Fairy Tea Pot God and still have beheadings, stonings, amputations and lashes on their statutes. Dosn't matter they don't practice it anymore.

It's a hypocrisy that is starting to get difficult to swallow.

So who are the idiots? The Arabs or the West?

[Tim Drayton]

Some random musings of somebody who lived and worked in Qatar for two years (and I mean stayed there for a full two years minus two periods away on holiday of about ten days each time).

SOCIALISM Yes, there are features of socialism for Qatari nationals, who make up about 12% of the population of the country in that they are pretty much guaranteed a job (without having to work), get a plot of land (well its a bit of desert that's worth not very much really) when they marry and have a house built for them if they can't afford it - that's about it, though, as well as medical care (see below) - but the whole system is built on foreign slave labour, and slavery has no place in socialism, and apart from this socialism is based on the principle "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs", i.e. socialism is about putting in as well as getting out, something that the bashers of socialism never get. What do the Qatari nationals put in? Absolutely nothing. So, no, it is not socialism, it has certain features that make it resemble socialism.

HEALTH CARE Well, yes, the one genuinely socialist aspect of the Qatari system in that health care is universal for everybody who is legally resident in the country. However, the state-provided health care system in Qatar is not highly rated. All the rich sheikhs go abroad for private treatment. Ask in Harley Street who their best customers are. I remember one British colleague of mine who had previously lived in Saudi Arabia and had undergone heart surgery there, under the free universal system in that country, but a few years later needed to have the operation redone in Qatar because the Saudi operation had been botched and whatever they had put into his heard had fallen out, and then they also botched the operation in Qatar and he was left virtually at death's door, and they finally just stuck him on a plane back to the UK to let the UK National Health sort out the mess. I remember that this man did not look at all well. I hope he survived, but quite frankly I doubt it. So, I am afraid I have my doubts about the quality of the free state healthcare, the only really genuine socialist aspect of life there. It is no wonder that nationals who have the money shun it.

SLAVERY Well, I have visited quite a number labour camps where Nepalis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans etc. live six to a room in prefabricated huts, each hut divided to make two rooms stacked up with bunk beds and perhaps one cupboard- I even have photos to prove it (the photos themselves are probably illegal and no wonder countries like Qatar want to keep this disgrace covered up) - and in my view the living conditions that these people endure is so bad as to be beyond description. Add to this the fact that they usually spend the first year at least working just to pay the fee to the middle man who brought them out. Add to this the phenomenal number of deaths at work. It all adds up to virtual slavery. I heard some stories from a person who worked on the ambulance service in Qatar about the treatment meted out to migrant workers that would make your hair curl. For example, being called up to pick up a corpse that had been left for days in a bed a cramped shared room that had no air conditioning in the middle of the summer when the temperature goes to over 50 and people had been forced to sleep in that room with a rotting human corpse in it. Or a time when the ambulance was told to come to a certain roundabout to pick up some injured construction workers, which was surprising because there was no construction site in the vicinity, but when they got there it turned out that these seriously injured people had been taken away from the building site and dumped at this roundabout so that the site where they were injured could not be identified. Apparently, they had been loaded onto the back of a truck (and some of them had broken limbs) and taken to this roundabout and chucked off the truck there like pieces of meat. And in this case, the injured workers were even their fellow Muslim Pakistanis! As to the racism displayed by these arrogant, lazy, useless people towards the South Asians who do all the work - well, to give one example I recall, I was walking behind a Qatari for-show employee at a company I worked at and we were approaching a doorway. An Asian walked in through the door, and there was a good half metre between this Qatari and the door and plenty of room for the Asian to pass in first, but this Qatari darted forward and extremely violently and forcefully pushed him back through the door at the temerity of one of the people who actually do the work and keep this fellow in his life of comfort and idleness daring to pass a half metre in front of him. And as to the housemaids who are routinely raped and then get thrown in prison for adultery if they get pregnant, while their rapist (usually a serial rapist) goes uninvestigated, well that is a very strange form of law and order.

TREATMENT METED OUT TO WESTERNERS Yes, it is better than the animal-like treatment given to South Asians, but I don't think anybody could call it just or acceptable. For one thing, there is a steady stream of Westerners who are summarily sacked on the spot and sent packing out of the country on a plane the same day, and most of the reasons for these sackings are plain stupid and often to cover up the mistakes of Arabs (no not Qatars, Arabs who work like Palestinians, Syrians, but are higher up the chain in this racist system that harks towards Apartheid in South Africa) who are in superior positions to them. I hear that in Saudi Arabia, unlike in Qatar where you are immediately sent home and told to pack, they actually drive you straight to the airport and plonk you on a plane, and send your luggage on afterwards. An example: a colleague of mine who was an English language instructor was assigned to teach a certain group in a certain classroom but when he went to the classroom there was nobody there. He went to his Palestinian supervisor and was told not to worry and as long as he went to the appointed classroom and stayed there he would be in the clear. This kept going on for days, and the instructor repeatedly brought this situation to his supervisor's attention and was given the same reassuring answer that as long as he went to the appointed classroom and stayed there, he would be in the clear. Eventually, the class, which had been told by Arab administrators to go to a different classroom, came and complained that their teacher was not attending and of course this bloke was sacked on the spot, to cover up the incompetence of the Arabs above him in the hierarchy, even though everyone with an ounce of sense can see that he had done nothing wrong at all. That is the mentality there - an Arab is always right and a non-Arab is always wrong. I would call that blatant racism.

QATARISATION AND QATARI'S IN WORK For years they have been trying to replace the foreign labour force, especially skilled workers in petroleum industry, and get nationals to replace them. Everybody who sees what goes on inside these companies knows that it has been a complete failure and joke. Yes, Qataris get jobs but it is just a title and they rarely even bother to show up. I remember once being given the day off because the Emir of Qatar was going to visit the plant I was working at and they gave all the foreigners (who do all the work) the day off that day and all of the token Qatari staff were on strict instructions to actually turn up on that day so the Emir could be shown round the plant and see nothing but Qatari's at every desk and every work station. What a charade! I often wonder if the Emir was really taken in. I know of a natural gas liquidation plant in Qatar where they have a system called ghosting. This means two people are appointed to every job, one of them a Qatari and the other an Indonesian, Indian, Filipino etc - and guess why that is and who does the real work. Apparently there is a rule at that plant that token Qataris must show up for three days a month or they get their pay docked. The sad thing is that there are a lot of very smart Qataris (I can say that with some confidence because I worked as an instructor with Qataris in their late teens/early twenties) and there is no reason why Qatarisation could not work. It just shows that the whole system and way the place is administrated is a shambles. In fact, I think of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's contention that development is impossible under the Sharia system and I can't help thinking that the failure of the Arabian Gulf to develop despite its immense wealth and human resources vindicates this view (and look at the ranking of Gulf countries in international development indices.

Qatar - if you ask me the whole place is a joke and is kept afloat by its huge hydrocarbon resources (which it needs Western expertise to extract) and the vast slave labour force from South Asia, making up over 80% of the population. I could go on at great length, but this much will do. I get a funny feeling that the starter of this thread really knows that the rosy view he gets from his occasional visits when he gets VIP treatment is not what you will find if you scratch under the surface, and he has another motive for posting this odd propaganda.

[Tim Drayton]

PS - The above impressions are twelve years' old now. I have no idea what has happened there since, and don't even care. That's the kind of impression that place left on me.

[Kikapu]

Tim, that was a great post you made above. I haven't even been to any Arab countries in this region aside from Egypt and I really have no desires to do so for all the reasons you have written about, and even I know that these Arab countries are useless in most things they try to do. This uselessness actually applies to most, if not all, Muslim countries in the world, and Turkey is no exception in this regard. The only thing the Arab countries have going for them is the oil in the ground, to pay for everything. There will come a time when these Petro-dollars rich Arab countries will not be able to keep their artificial living standards up when their oil will not be needed anywhere the level it has been in the last century, thanks to renewable energy technology created by the industrial countries. Then what will they do? Our good friend Paphitis is lucky to be white male and from the west living in Saudi Arabia right now ( I think that's what he said few months ago), or else he would be singing a different tune if he was a migrant worker from South East Asia, working in these racists and pretentious Arab countries.

[Robin Hood]

Tim /Kikapu

I spent 4 years working in Saudi and can support every thing you said. We used to take food from our canteen to give to the TCN's as they were subject to eating boiled rice and very little else. Their accommodation was just as described, 6 sometimes 8 to a room, bunk beds, one shower and one toilet. I felt sorry for them as they were literally treated like slaves. We went home for two weeks every three months or so ...... they were there for two years at a stretch! The Saudis were sh*t! I don't think I have ever met a more arrogant and lazy race of useless individuals in my working life. They have no idea of what a days work is and never EVER do they get their hands dirty. Horrible race and Paphitis is welcome to them!

Paphitis lives on another planet!

Prior to Saudi, I worked in Algeria and that was not quite so bad but poverty was apparent. The people there were frightened and the secret police were every where. They didn't bother us but again they bullied the TCN's mainly Phillipine nationals.

Before that I spent 4 years in Iran and can honestly say the place was far less oppressive and the people happier, more content and friendly than any of the other Muslim countries. I worked with them daily at all levels and they were all well educated, incredibly polite and were quite free to talk about their life under the Islamic Government. They were well looked after by the state, although maybe not as posh or modern as found in Saudi for instance but this was mainly due to the US sanctions and some thing were hard to get ..... I used to come home every 3.5 months with a shopping list. Top of the list M&S underwear and 'Charlie' perfume!!!

I think with the OP ..... he is seriously misguided. So nothing changes then?

[Paphitis]

Some random musings of somebody who lived and worked in Qatar for two years (and I mean stayed there for a full two years minus two periods away on holiday of about ten days each time).

SOCIALISM Yes, there are features of socialism for Qatari nationals, who make up about 12% of the population of the country in that they are pretty much guaranteed a job (without having to work), get a plot of land (well its a bit of desert that's worth not very much really) when they marry and have a house built for them if they can't afford it - that's about it, though, as well as medical care (see below) - but the whole system is built on foreign slave labour, and slavery has no place in socialism, and apart from this socialism is based on the principle "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs", i.e. socialism is about putting in as well as getting out, something that the bashers of socialism never get. What do the Qatari nationals put in? Absolutely nothing. So, no, it is not socialism, it has certain features that make it resemble socialism.

HEALTH CARE Well, yes, the one genuinely socialist aspect of the Qatari system in that health care is universal for everybody who is legally resident in the country. However, the state-provided health care system in Qatar is not highly rated. All the rich sheikhs go abroad for private treatment. Ask in Harley Street who their best customers are. I remember one British colleague of mine who had previously lived in Saudi Arabia and had undergone heart surgery there, under the free universal system in that country, but a few years later needed to have the operation redone in Qatar because the Saudi operation had been botched and whatever they had put into his heard had fallen out, and then they also botched the operation in Qatar and he was left virtually at death's door, and they finally just stuck him on a plane back to the UK to let the UK National Health sort out the mess. I remember that this man did not look at all well. I hope he survived, but quite frankly I doubt it. So, I am afraid I have my doubts about the quality of the free state healthcare, the only really genuine socialist aspect of life there. It is no wonder that nationals who have the money shun it.

SLAVERY Well, I have visited quite a number labour camps where Nepalis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans etc. live six to a room in prefabricated huts, each hut divided to make two rooms stacked up with bunk beds and perhaps one cupboard- I even have photos to prove it (the photos themselves are probably illegal and no wonder countries like Qatar want to keep this disgrace covered up) - and in my view the living conditions that these people endure is so bad as to be beyond description. Add to this the fact that they usually spend the first year at least working just to pay the fee to the middle man who brought them out. Add to this the phenomenal number of deaths at work. It all adds up to virtual slavery. I heard some stories from a person who worked on the ambulance service in Qatar about the treatment meted out to migrant workers that would make your hair curl. For example, being called up to pick up a corpse that had been left for days in a bed a cramped shared room that had no air conditioning in the middle of the summer when the temperature goes to over 50 and people had been forced to sleep in that room with a rotting human corpse in it. Or a time when the ambulance was told to come to a certain roundabout to pick up some injured construction workers, which was surprising because there was no construction site in the vicinity, but when they got there it turned out that these seriously injured people had been taken away from the building site and dumped at this roundabout so that the site where they were injured could not be identified. Apparently, they had been loaded onto the back of a truck (and some of them had broken limbs) and taken to this roundabout and chucked off the truck there like pieces of meat. And in this case, the injured workers were even their fellow Muslim Pakistanis! As to the racism displayed by these arrogant, lazy, useless people towards the South Asians who do all the work - well, to give one example I recall, I was walking behind a Qatari for-show employee at a company I worked at and we were approaching a doorway. An Asian walked in through the door, and there was a good half metre between this Qatari and the door and plenty of room for the Asian to pass in first, but this Qatari darted forward and extremely violently and forcefully pushed him back through the door at the temerity of one of the people who actually do the work and keep this fellow in his life of comfort and idleness daring to pass a half metre in front of him. And as to the housemaids who are routinely raped and then get thrown in prison for adultery if they get pregnant, while their rapist (usually a serial rapist) goes uninvestigated, well that is a very strange form of law and order.

TREATMENT METED OUT TO WESTERNERS Yes, it is better than the animal-like treatment given to South Asians, but I don't think anybody could call it just or acceptable. For one thing, there is a steady stream of Westerners who are summarily sacked on the spot and sent packing out of the country on a plane the same day, and most of the reasons for these sackings are plain stupid and often to cover up the mistakes of Arabs (no not Qatars, Arabs who work like Palestinians, Syrians, but are higher up the chain in this racist system that harks towards Apartheid in South Africa) who are in superior positions to them. I hear that in Saudi Arabia, unlike in Qatar where you are immediately sent home and told to pack, they actually drive you straight to the airport and plonk you on a plane, and send your luggage on afterwards. An example: a colleague of mine who was an English language instructor was assigned to teach a certain group in a certain classroom but when he went to the classroom there was nobody there. He went to his Palestinian supervisor and was told not to worry and as long as he went to the appointed classroom and stayed there he would be in the clear. This kept going on for days, and the instructor repeatedly brought this situation to his supervisor's attention and was given the same reassuring answer that as long as he went to the appointed classroom and stayed there, he would be in the clear. Eventually, the class, which had been told by Arab administrators to go to a different classroom, came and complained that their teacher was not attending and of course this bloke was sacked on the spot, to cover up the incompetence of the Arabs above him in the hierarchy, even though everyone with an ounce of sense can see that he had done nothing wrong at all. That is the mentality there - an Arab is always right and a non-Arab is always wrong. I would call that blatant racism.

QATARISATION AND QATARI'S IN WORK For years they have been trying to replace the foreign labour force, especially skilled workers in petroleum industry, and get nationals to replace them. Everybody who sees what goes on inside these companies knows that it has been a complete failure and joke. Yes, Qataris get jobs but it is just a title and they rarely even bother to show up. I remember once being given the day off because the Emir of Qatar was going to visit the plant I was working at and they gave all the foreigners (who do all the work) the day off that day and all of the token Qatari staff were on strict instructions to actually turn up on that day so the Emir could be shown round the plant and see nothing but Qatari's at every desk and every work station. What a charade! I often wonder if the Emir was really taken in. I know of a natural gas liquidation plant in Qatar where they have a system called ghosting. This means two people are appointed to every job, one of them a Qatari and the other an Indonesian, Indian, Filipino etc - and guess why that is and who does the real work. Apparently there is a rule at that plant that token Qataris must show up for three days a month or they get their pay docked. The sad thing is that there are a lot of very smart Qataris (I can say that with some confidence because I worked as an instructor with Qataris in their late teens/early twenties) and there is no reason why Qatarisation could not work. It just shows that the whole system and way the place is administrated is a shambles. In fact, I think of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's contention that development is impossible under the Sharia system and I can't help thinking that the failure of the Arabian Gulf to develop despite its immense wealth and human resources vindicates this view (and look at the ranking of Gulf countries in international development indices.

Qatar - if you ask me the whole place is a joke and is kept afloat by its huge hydrocarbon resources (which it needs Western expertise to extract) and the vast slave labour force from South Asia, making up over 80% of the population. I could go on at great length, but this much will do. I get a funny feeling that the starter of this thread really knows that the rosy view he gets from his occasional visits when he gets VIP treatment is not what you will find if you scratch under the surface, and he has another motive for posting this odd propaganda.

I can't say much about QATAR, but i do wonder how accurate this is Tim. I did see a documentary about foreign labour camps in Qatar of workers who are building the World Cup Infrastructure and accommodation standards are indeed appalling as well as the way these labourers are treated and cant leave the country. Also, their health needs are not adequately catered for. So slave labour? perhaps.

But that does ot extend to Westerners working in Qatar thankfully.

In other countries like Oman, UAE and KSA, things are completely different. Usually luxury accommodation is provided, salaries are usually the best in the world, you can get favoritism by making a tax "donation, health care is provided, and they pay for all the commuting to and from.

Sure, the KSA is very much out there, the UAE is like any western Country pretty much, but things are not as bad as you think.

Even alcohol is allowed in the KSA. It depends on who you know, who your employer is, and of course it still remains behind closed doors. It is a 2 tier system with Sharia only applying to the "commoners" for lack of a better word.

And yes, the Health System is actually state of the art from what I have gathered and quite adequate for the population. The Royals probably prefer treatment from overseas, like the US, because Health care there is probably better only because they have better surgeons which only money can buy. And as money is no object for them, that is what they do.

It's like their Education system as well, which is also of a very high standard and free for their citizens. The Royals are still educated at Harvard, Columbia, Oxford etc etc.

[Paphitis]

Tim, that was a great post you made above. I haven't even been to any Arab countries in this region aside from Egypt and I really have no desires to do so for all the reasons you have written about, and even I know that these Arab countries are useless in most things they try to do. This uselessness actually applies to most, if not all, Muslim countries in the world, and Turkey is no exception in this regard. The only thing the Arab countries have going for them is the oil in the ground, to pay for everything. There will come a time when these Petro-dollars rich Arab countries will not be able to keep their artificial living standards up when their oil will not be needed anywhere the level it has been in the last century, thanks to renewable energy technology created by the industrial countries. Then what will they do? Our good friend Paphitis is lucky to be white male and from the west living in Saudi Arabia right now ( I think that's what he said few months ago), or else he would be singing a different tune if he was a migrant worker from South East Asia, working in these racists and pretentious Arab countries.

You should go, It is an eye opener.

And yes, you would be very impressed. There are also quite unparalleled benefits for citizens to these countries which is why I made a comparison to socialism.

Also, Oil is not the only thing going for them. They are not as stupid as people would like to think. For instance, if the KSA, UAE, Qatar etc pulled all their money out of Wall Street, the Stock Market will crash. We will be in a depression that is worse than the one in the 1930s. They are building infrastructure continuously, the best roads, best airports best hospitals, and schools. They are developing their tourism and becoming Banking and Finance Global Hubs.

Every citizen is given land to build on, is guaranteed a job for life in the Public Sector and benefits from free education and health in hospitals that look better than the best & Star Resorts. Almost makes you want to get sick. They achieve it with 0% tax as well.

To me, this indicates that their system of Government is certainly not as bad as people in the west make out. We in the west should look at all the idiots we elect who border on the incompetent and only talk about Health and Education as a political football. In the Middle east, they actually deliver. And they don't have to since they are dictators. They could just line their Swiss and Panamanian bank accounts with money (which they certainly do) but they also provide for the greater population as well. And they achieve great law enforcement and near zero crime and hardly a drug and alcohol problem or domestic violence against anyone including women.

probably because getting 1000 lashes or the Death Penalty doesn't sound like much fun.

[Paphitis]

Tim /Kikapu

I spent 4 years working in Saudi and can support every thing you said. We used to take food from our canteen to give to the TCN's as they were subject to eating boiled rice and very little else. Their accommodation was just as described, 6 sometimes 8 to a room, bunk beds, one shower and one toilet. I felt sorry for them as they were literally treated like slaves. We went home for two weeks every three months or so ...... they were there for two years at a stretch! The Saudis were sh*t! I don't think I have ever met a more arrogant and lazy race of useless individuals in my working life. They have no idea of what a days work is and never EVER do they get their hands dirty. Horrible race and Paphitis is welcome to them!

Paphitis lives on another planet!

Prior to Saudi, I worked in Algeria and that was not quite so bad but poverty was apparent. The people there were frightened and the secret police were every where. They didn't bother us but again they bullied the TCN's mainly Phillipine nationals.

Before that I spent 4 years in Iran and can honestly say the place was far less oppressive and the people happier, more content and friendly than any of the other Muslim countries. I worked with them daily at all levels and they were all well educated, incredibly polite and were quite free to talk about their life under the Islamic Government. They were well looked after by the state, although maybe not as posh or modern as found in Saudi for instance but this was mainly due to the US sanctions and some thing were hard to get ..... I used to come home every 3.5 months with a shopping list. Top of the list M&S underwear and 'Charlie' perfume!!!

I think with the OP ..... he is seriously misguided. So nothing changes then?

Not the case anymore. They are building luxury compounds and wages can be as high as $1500 USD per day, with all transfers paid for.

They will even pay for your family to move over, but that might not be suitable for some. Women can even wear what they want.

Victoria secret makes more sales of explicit lingerie to countries like saudi arabia per capita than anywhere else. True story.

Even alcohol is secretly permitted in some places, but you still need to be careful in case you piss someone of.

Things are changing, and I would imagine you would be hard pressed to find a foreign Indian or Bangladeshi oil worker on less than $800USD per day. I don't know what their citizens earn in the public sector. All I know is that everyone is guaranteed work in the Government for life. And they don't do that much. they are very lazy, and to put it into context, they are probably worse than the Cypriot Public Sector. They just don't work that much.

A good friend of mine was the body guard for the 53rd in line prince (true story). Some people even have bars full of alcohol, cocaine, and a private harem (which of course I do not condone at all). A mid 20s son of one of the Sauds but can't remember who.

I don't know what general hands or maids earn, but you can bet they are on a lot more money than those in Cyprus.