Santa Claus

If Santa Claus had known about UAE, he would have left his gift factory. The whole idea is about dwarfs. Immigration office, in Santa Claus’s happy land, limits the number of foreign employment. Also, the labor office puts regulation regarding working hours and conditions, beside minimum salary. Santa, you should come to here, where little men, a lot of them, will take care of your gifts. In addition, you will have one to cut your beard, one to dye it, and your clothes, and another to clean your shoes. Also, no need for your cattle to drag your cart. We don’t want to upset animal rights organization, so use dwarfs to do this mission.

First dwarf I met, when I had arrived, was at security check point. He carries the basket for you, wait until you unload your pockets, then he puts the basket over the x-ray machine. Another one was on the other side taking the empty baskets to the first dwarf. People really don’t have to do anything, and soon we may make dwarf breath for us. For first time, I’ve seen dirty and lazy westerner. Hence, it’s their good nature has changed due to hot humid climate. Or, it’s the missing tight system. Anyway, it could be multifactorial, 2 components of them are: 1. somebody always after you to clean your shit. 2. This shit cleaner is a cheap labor.

Dwarfs are all over the place in Abu Dhabi: I don’t think the government imports them from outside. I suspect there are some hidden mines or factories to extract and manufacture dwarfs. Those factories are operated by dwarfs themselves. The truth which I’m not sure of that locals has a fewer career and occupations opportunities, as foreigners do everything. Otherwise, the fact would be that government provides the best jobs for locals, leaving dwarfs doing the dirty work. The 2010 estimation for the population is 4.9M; Emiratis are only 19 to 20%. Unemployment rate is 4.9%. Still numbers could be deceiving and it’s not clear if the unemployment rate includes both foreigners and citizens.

The only estimation for unemployed in Saudi Arabia is provided by local banks. It states that around 10% of males only are without jobs. Notice, statistics include males only, there’s no whatever data for females. However, some rates go up to 25% of the population. The noticeable efforts in last 5 to 10 years were to recruit Saudis as cooker/chiefs, seller men, or customer services. The last update is we could provide up to 50K occupation by making Saudis work in fuel stations. Well, the least guess for foreigners in Saudi Arabia is 8 million out of 27 million total population. Something is worth mentioning before we resume this topic is the Saudi males represent 50.9% of the whole population, while females are only 49.1%. If we should support polygamy, then we may end up with the half of boys unmarried. The other way, we divide the other male half into 2 halves, and let’s support homosexuality.

I presume: the 8 million non-Saudi are holding the best jobs, and sharp edge occupation. On the other hand, the Saudis are labored in blue collar jobs. I don’t mean to underestimate any profession, yet I wanna emphasis on the irony of comparison between UAE and KSA.