High Income Developing Country

Abu Dhabi appears to be a modern city with several sleek high rises, high quality roads, a new bus system, and expensive cars. While some buildings are dilapidated and crumbling, most apartments and villas are nice looking and clean. Malls are modern to the extreme. Living in Abu Dhabi made me wonder, why do they call UAE a high income developing country?

This week I traveled about a half an hour from Abu Dhabi to tour the Musaffah and ICAD Industrial Areas with two inspectors from the Abu Dhabi Environment Agency. It was another world. Musaffah is an old industrial are with several small automotive, painting, and other small-scale shops. ICAD I is a relatively new industrial area with asphalt manufacturing, cement mix facilities, and iron and steel makers. Right now, plans are afoot to expand the large ICAD areas from 1 to 5.

I have toured industrial sites in the U.S. before, and they are generally clean and organized, with workers wearing safety equipment. The shops in Musaffah are dirty, with oil contamination in the sand and dark smoke coming from smoke stacks. There is a large salt water lake where dump trucks come to illegally offload construction waste. One water way was completely red. My colleague said it looked like the Saudi Arabian industrial areas he worked in 30 years ago.

Perhaps the saddest sight was the worker accommodations. The workers lived right next to a massive city waste transfer station overfilling with stinking trash. Small, primitive cinderblock dwellings were divided into two. I have no idea how many people live in each dwelling. There was a pile of thin mattresses sitting out in the sun. Socks and underwear hung in some windows. Luckily there were window AC units on each trailer. How sad that they are stuck in the middle of industrial wasteland with no shops and no entertainment. I assume this is how agricultural workers live in the US. As we left a large tanker truck of drinking water was pulling in and one of the inspectors said “Here is the water for the animals—I mean the workers.” He shared my sentiments on the sad conditions. I had to have a moment of silence for the sad plight of the workers and the environment in Musaffah.

The ICAD areas are a bit more advanced; industries are larger and their facilities appeared to be cleaner. There is a massive new development for worker housing called ICAD Worker City that looked pretty impressive from a distance. It’s still amazing to think of the number of workers living out in the middle of the desert to work in dangerous factories. The inspectors confirmed that there are environmental problems at many of the facilities: air pollution, lack of worker safety equipment, soil contamination, no areas for waste, etc. There is a lot of work to do here.