Bahrain Labour Minister: Gulf Arabs are Lazy

Surely, the locals will muster up the energy to seethe and whine when they read about this. Granted, he probably just doesn't want so many many people from the Asian sub-continent living in his country, but he does make a good point.

Bahrain labour minister warns of 'Asian tsunami'

DUBAI (AFP) - A Bahraini minister has warned of an "Asian tsunami" because of the reliance of "lazy" Gulf Arabs on foreign labour to carry out even the simplest tasks, in an interview published on Sunday.

Labour Minister Majid al-Alawi told Asharq Al-Awsat that the presence of almost 17 million foreign workers in the Gulf, mostly from the Asian sub-continent, represented "a danger worse than the atomic bomb or an Israeli attack".

"I am not exaggerating that the number will reach almost 30 million in ten years from now," he told the pan-Arab daily.

Alawi has called for the residency of foreign workers in the oil-rich Gulf states to be limited to six years but the leadership of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council has not followed up on the proposal.

"The commercial lobby in the Gulf thwarted the project which was in the final phases before being implemented," he said.

Alawi said that Gulf nationals were "lazy" and "spoilt", relying on imported labour for the simplest of tasks.

"A lord with billions in Great Britain cleans his own car on a Sunday morning, whereas people of the Gulf look for someone to hand them a glass of water from just a couple of metres away," he said.

"If the Gulf governments do not watch out for this tsunami of foreign labourers, the fate of this region is very worrying," he said.

Al Alwai had previously lived in exile in London. He may again be exiled after this.