Page 232 - UAE Truncal States
P. 232

Social Aspects of Traditional Economy

         might lose their jobs to those who came back armed with experience
         in oil-field work.
           In the middle of the 1950s the traditional pattern of the life of the
         LTwa based on the multiple-skilled tribesman of Abu Dhabi was still
         recognisable, but for an increasing number of people the traditional
         seasonal routine had changed. According to the information col­
         lected by an oil company employee and those who helped him during
         interviews in almost every inhabited village of the Llwa in April
         1955,15 only about one in ten of the people who used to go pearling
         still participated during that year. They were generally only those
         who owned pearling boats and their relatives who had a direct in­
         terest in them. More people went pearling during the summers of the
         early 1950s because of the bad date harvest following locust attacks.
           The availability of outside employment influenced the traditional
         pattern of life of the multi-skilled tribesman, but at the same time did
         not necessitate drastic changes in his lifestyle. Most tribesmen
         initially took a job with the oil company, regarding it rather like one
         of the traditional seasonal occupations, returning to the dates or
         camels or to fishing at any time they saw fit. The traditional routine
         arrangements with regard to the rest of the family, the camels and
         date palms remained unaltered even though the able-bodied men
         now went to work for the company.
           By 1955, of the LTwa-based men who went away to seek work with
         an oil company the largest number was employed by PD(TC); others
         remained in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain. Employment
         opportunities for retainers and guards with the oil companies
         remained important aspects of the increase in numbers of regularly
         paid jobs available for local people. After the establishment in 1951
         of the Trucial Oman Levies, some young men from the Llwa enrolled
         as soldiers and trainees. Some Llwa-based families were also among
         those subjects of the Ruler of Abu Dhabi who went to live and work
         in Doha, Dubai or al Hasa in Saudi Arabia.
           Abu Dhabi, the Trucial shaikhdom with a large beduin population
         among whom the versatile tribesmen were predominant, proved to be
         an example of the relative ease with which these people who had a
         base in the hinterland fell back on their other resources—dates,
         camels, fish—when pearling was no longer as profitable as before.
         For the majority of the inhabitants of the other Trucial States ports,
         however, the pearling industry and associated trades represented
         the only means of earning a livelihood.
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