DAMMAM, 16 May — An investigation over the past week by Arab News into the standard of accommodation provided for Third World expatriates in Dammam and Alkhobar has revealed shocking levels of neglect and exploitation by many employers.

One of the labor camps visited by this reporter is located near Dammam’s railway station.

The workers there are employed by a maintenance and cleaning company that has a major contract with the Dammam Industrial City Authority.

The secluded camp does not even have electricity. Instead, power is supplied by generators, which are operated only during night hours.

During the daytime, the laborers have to survive as best they can. The conditions are already unbearable, and summer has not yet arrived.

These 200 laborers symbolize the plight of hundreds of other Third World laborers who have to put up with sub-human living conditions because of cruelty on the part of their sponsors.

A Bangladeshi, who refused to give his name, told Arab News that while in the winter things are just about bearable, all the workers dread the onset of summer.

Four to six workers are housed in a single room. The company operates three shifts a day, and those who work the day shift consider themselves lucky because there is air conditioning in their various workplaces.

It is a different story for those who work the night shift.

“When we return from our job, we are dead tired and just want to go to bed. But how can we sleep in a room that has been transformed into a furnace by noon?” asked another Bangladeshi worker.

In the summer, the temperature in Dammam can top 50 degrees Celsius.

For those working the day shift, there is at work at least the luxury of air-conditioners; but, again, they are cramped four to a room during night because their company wants to cut costs.

This reporter saw one room in which eight workers had to sleep together.

Elsewhere in Alkhobar, a limousine company has provided a five-room villa for its drivers. That may sound like a step in the right direction. But Arab News was shown how in each of the rooms there are two rows of three-tier bunker beds, and each driver has been given an allotted time during which the bed becomes his own.

For example, Nasir Khan, a Pakistani, can occupy his bed from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

After that, another driver has the privilege.

“Even if I’m not well, I have to get out of bed to let the other driver get some sleep,” he said.

In Thuqba, a densely populated area of Alkhobar, there is a camp for construction workers.

How ironic it is that these workers, who construct beautiful villas, are made to live in what amounts to a slum!

When this reporter visited the camp yesterday, the stink was almost overbearing; but the workers themselves just shrugged and said they had had to get used to it.

The entire camp is carpeted; but the carpet looks like it has never been cleaned and is heavily infested with insects.

A number of the workers have acute diarrhea and hepatitis.

Not all the workers’ camps in the Eastern Province are as bad as those mentioned above. Indeed, there are many camps in Dammam and Alkhobar where no more than two to three workers occupy a single room, which has a working air-conditioner.

These camps also have common rooms and recreation halls. The companies that provide this accommodation report excellent productivity and low medical costs.

But that is little comfort to the 200 Bangladeshis in the camp near Dammam’s railway station, for whom each new day is one day closer to summer — and a degree or two of extra heat that will worsen still further their nightmarish existence.