The Hospitables

Written by Sidrah Roghay • April 2011

The Maldives economy heavily depends on tourism with about 28% or a third of the population employed in it. Tourism workers make up about 15% of the total voting population.

Home to the world’s first undersea resort, coral reefs and exotic cuisine, this flock of islands has a per capita income rising up to U.S. $ 5000.

Even though tourism accounts for the largest share in the economy, living conditions of the hospitality staff are not ideal, to put it mildly. They often complain of low wages, many often earning as low as 3000 Rf per month (U.S. $ 234.29). Resort workers have called for an overall raise in the minimum wages of the population.
Male, the capital city is the hub of all economic activity in the country. Quality schools and health facilities are clustered here. Resorts are often situated on islands bought by large companies. Resort staff in most cases has no other option than working away from their families. Transport costs within the income they earn stretch limits even further.

Presidential elections were held in the Maldives in 2008. According to the Tourist Employee’s Association of Maldives (TEAM), 30,000 resort workers were blocked from the voting process. The safari boat community was an even more disadvantaged group as it did not know where its work would take it on the election day. The Election Commission ordered owners to inform staff about registration and transport them to polling stations. In some cases polling stations were placed inside resorts. However, TEAM believes that in cases where political affiliations of the staff differed from the owners, the right to vote of workers was affected.

Although the law in Maldives says that 50% of all staff should be local, there has been open disregard for this. The most talked about move of resort owners nowadays is the” blonds only hiring” policy. The BBC reports that a Lithuanian company has revealed plans to open a Maldives holiday resort run entirely by blonde women - though some critics are calling the move “racist”. The Telegraph, a local daily, ran a story on how the Oliala Development Resort scheduled to open in 2015, will have an “education centre” where, blondes would teach guests on “how to always be perfect and look great”. The project head, also a blonde, Giedre Pukiene, says the move is a means to breaking the myth that blondes are dumb. The Maldivian women are black haired and this particular move has raised several eyebrows.

In 2008, the Employment Act was passed which introduced minimum wages and limited weekly working hours and promised new institutions to resolve employment-related disputes. However, resort workers were exempted from this law. Once the media brought the issue into the limelight, it was termed an “unfortunate mistake” by legal reform minister Mohamed Nasheed. Even so, the act was not amended before it came into effect in July 2008. As a result workers took to strikes. Incidents where workers were fired for organizing protests were reported. In 2009, an amendment was finally passed which promised labor rights to resort staff.

Despite all this, laws in Maldives regarding resort staff rights are ambiguous. Even today there are instances where the right to collective bargaining and minimum wages is not recognized. Though the Maldivian media has become freer over the years, it is still controlled by politicians and the state. In these circumstances the only platform for workers to voice their concerns is either through blogs or through international independent media.