A draft labour law proposed by the United Arab Emirates falls far short of international standards for the rights of workers key to the Gulf Arab state’s construction boom, Human Rights Watch said recently.

The New York-based group welcomed the government’s efforts to revise labour legislation, but said the bill failed in some key areas and excluded domestic workers, public sector workers and agricultural workers from its scope.

“The UAE must amend its draft law to respect workers’ rights to organise, bargain collectively and strike,” Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East Director at Human Rights Watch, said. “In the past year, the authorities have put down attempted strikes with violence rather than addressing the poor working conditions that fuel labour unrest,” she said in a statement.

The watchdog said that excluding certain workers from the labour law exposed them to exploitation while penalties proposed on firms that flout the law were too low.

The UAE, especially the emirate of Dubai which is the Gulf’s trade and tourism hub, is in the midst of a building boom.

Like many Gulf Arab countries, the UAE relies heavily on foreign workers, from poor labourers – often Asian – to high-income executives, who comprise over 85 percent of the population.

Human Rights Watch, which issued a report in November urging the UAE to crack down on labour abuse, says there are 700,000 construction workers in the UAE, most of them from South Asian countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.

Construction workers, who often live in cramped labour camps, regularly go on strike or protest against employers they accuse of failing to pay promised wages. The government has revised the labour law in recent months to include requirements that employers pay for migrant workers’ travel, employment permits, medical tests and health care. It has posted the draft on the Internet and urged the public to make comments before it is adopted.

Labour Minister Ali bin Abdullah al-Kaabi said the UAE had a record of defending workers’ rights but welcomed the comments.

“We do appreciate the comments made by Human Rights Watch about the draft labour law in the UAE and we will take them into consideration,” he said on official WAM news agency.

The UAE said in November it had ordered the closure of over 100 sub-standard labour camps as part of its crackdown.