IT is only about 10 kilometres from the Nad al-Sheba race track to Bur Dubai. But on25 March, the day the world's richest horse race was run, it could have been a million miles away for Majid. Not for him a day out at the races. Instead, it was business as usual, which means a nine-hour working day as a labourer on the site of a new office development.

Majid's tale is the common one of the Gulf construction worker. Four years ago, he stepped off an Air India flight from Mumbai with high hopes. A carpenter by trade, he had come to Dubai from a small village in Uttar Pradesh to seek his fortune on the construction sites of the Gulf. With no prospect of work at home and the promise of a better life ahead for him and his family, Majid jumped at the opportunity to work for a medium- sized, local contractor. 'I hoped that I would earn enough to build a small house and open a small shop in my village,' he recalls. 'But now, I know I have made a big mistake.'

For the privilege of his new job working six days a week in the unrelenting heat of the Gulf summer, Majid paid an agent in Mumbai Rs 58,000 ($1,330). With a monthly salary of AED 720 ($196), it took him three years of working in Dubai to clear the loan he took out to pay the agent's commission. Having paid his penance, he is now unsure how long he will stay. 'I don't want to be here too much longer, a couple of more years perhaps. There are just too many problems,' he says.

Majid's life is tough. He rises at 6 o'clock in the morning and is delivered to the site an hour later, after an uncomfortable journey crammed into the back of a large trailer with as many as 70 other people. For the next five hours, he is hard at work until a one-hour break for lunch. Work resumes at 1 o'clock in the afternoon and lasts for another four hours. Then the trailer returns, picks him up and drops him off at the Sonapur labour camp in Al-Qussais.

Sonapur is no holiday camp. Amenities are minimal in what passes for home to hundreds of thousands of construction workers. The sprawl of compounds and sheds has a dismal reputation. 'Don't go there on pay day,' warns one international contractor. 'It is like a wild west town, with fighting, gambling and alcohol.'

Majid plays down such tales of social tensions at Sonapur. As a Muslim, he does not drink or gamble. He says that fighting in his compound is rare. 'We have come here to work and earn money, not to fight. Ifwe want to do that, we can do it at home.'

He shares a room with seven others. There is no air-conditioning. In the summer, when temperatures can soar to 50degrees centigrade the fellow inmates usually club together to buy a second-hand air-conditioner, which will be sold off once the thermometer begins to drop in the late summer. He says that the sanitary conditions in his compound are poor. Distractions are few: his room doesn't have a television. 'All we do when we get back from work is cook a meal, take a shower and then go to bed,' he says. 'Life is very boring and tiring.'

In contrast to some other companies, Majid's employer offers few benefits. He has to make a monthly contribution of AED 15 for electricity and water. There are no service benefits such as the return ticket home every two years which is the norm for most expatriates. If he wants to visit his wife and four children, he has to stump up the fare himself. He is given a health card, allowing him access to the local government-run health facilities but is not entitled to any compensation or pay if he is injured or unwell.

The risk an accident is one of Majid's greatest fears. He worries about working on high-rise structures with inadequate safety rails, especially since a recent accident at another site in Dubai where an Indian labourer plunged to his death. Yet, Majid appears blissfully unaware of the most basic safety code. On site, he does not wear a hard hat or safety boots, sporting instead a baseball cap and flimsy canvas shoes.

Of far greater concern to Majid, however, is the fact that he is not getting paid on time. 'I am owed four months salary,' he says. 'What can we do? If we open our mouths and complain, we get packed off to India without our dues.'

Majid's dilemma is not an unusual one. Anecdotal evidence from across the Gulf suggests that many contractors have reacted to the two-year downturn in construction activity by taking it out on their workers. 'Whether it happens because clients have not paid contractors or as a result of companies taking jobs at silly prices, the outcome is the same - people are looking to cut costs,' says a European contractor, based in Dubai. 'The more unscrupulous are targeting the most vulnerable and are robbing Peter to pay Paul. They would rather pay a supplier than a worker as work will ultimately continue on the project. I don't know what the answer is unless governments bring in legislation, which is enforced. But that would probably mean the death of many companies.'

Maintaining safety standards also costs money. 'We have a full-time safety officer on all our sites, ensuring that workers wear the right gear, that scaffolding is put up correctly, and that the necessary precautions are taken,' says the general manager at one of the larger Dubai contracting firms. 'But I can go down the road, and see guys standing on one plank, 15 stories up, wearing flip-flops, with not a safety officer in sight. The irony is that companies like that are being rewarded, simply because their prices are cheaper than anyone else's.'

Since the building boom began in earnest in the early 1970s, the Gulf construction sector has offered Indian labourers an escape from grinding poverty at home. The vast majority, who have been paid on time and not suffered injury at work, have few complaints. Equally, for a significant number, the promised land has failed to live up to expectations. Instead, there is the memory of the massive agent's fee and the long haul before it is paid back.

Workers like Majid now face some stark choices. His family is worried about his health and wants him to return home, even though the chances of finding a job there are far from certain. Having spent three years paying off his loan, the 32-year old is inclined to stay. After all, despite the evident difficulties, there is money still to be made. 'I can send home AED 300 a month,' he says. 'That is if I get paid.'