LUXURY developments on artificial islands in the Arabian Sea, where highly paid British footballers own holiday homes worth £700,000, are being built by migrant workers earning as little as £3 a day.

The Palm Jumeirah, off the coast of Dubai, has been designed in the shape of a palm tree with 1,500 opulent villas and 30 beachfront hotels, including one under construction by Donald Trump, the American entrepreneur.

David Beckham is among the stars who have bought substantial properties there. They will soon be enjoying attractions ranging from scuba diving to a “golden mile” of restaurants and shops, secure in the knowledge that they are protected from paparazzi by the strict privacy laws of Dubai, the most populous of the seven states that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

But less than four miles from the resort stands the bleak desert camp of Jebel Ali, a sprawl of breeze-block huts and battered trailers where about 10,000 construction workers — including many from the Palm Jumeirah — are crammed into stifling dormitories at the end of the day.

They sleep up to 15 to a room, each with a flimsy bunk bed, a thin mattress and dirty, bug-rid-den sheets. They cook their paltry meals on mini-stoves and squat on the ground to eat. One resident spoke of a strike four months ago over a shortage of lavatories.

The conditions reflect the meagre wages for a working week of six and often seven days. Many of the men believed the assurances of recruiters in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh that they would make enough money to support their poverty-stricken families back home, but have since become trapped in a spiral of debt and despair.

The government of the UAE was accused by Human Rights Watch last year of presiding over abuses ranging from low and unpaid wages to deaths and injuries caused by poor health and safety procedures. But little appears to have changed.

Last week Gandeep, a carpenter in his mid-twenties, said he had been deceived by a recruitment company in his native Punjab that had promised him a skilled job in Dubai. Instead he had been put to work as a helper in a restaurant on the Palm, where British buyers are acquiring a quarter of the properties.

Gandeep earns £76 a month. His hopes of sending money back to his family have been destroyed. With food costing about £35 a month, there is little left to pay off a £1,100 debt to the recruitment agency, let alone to spare for relatives. His passport was taken by his employer when he arrived in Dubai, effectively trapping him in his job.

He seemed resigned to his fate. “I don’t like it here and I want to go back but I just have no means to do so,” he said.

His story is the norm rather than the exception. Murgan, a labourer from Andhra Pradesh in south India who is working on a 10-storey building on the Palm Jumeirah, told a similar tale. He paid £1,400 to an agency and now exists on £83 a month. In other camps, workers on different projects told of toddlers they had never seen and children pleading with them to come home.

Ilias, a 28-year-old labourer who came from Rajasthan, northwest India, to live in the Sonapur labour camp, said he could go home only every two years to see his daughters, aged six and four, and he now had a one-year-old son. “Life is tough here,” he said.

He said he worked eight-hour shifts for £100 a month on a construction site near the Mall of the Emirates, an exclusive shopping centre that has an indoor ski run with real snow.

The driving force behind the multi-billion-pound Palm project and other developments that have transformed Dubai is its ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. With oil expected to run out within 20 years, the emirate has embarked on a building frenzy to secure its future as a tourist destination.

Dubai has the first seven-star hotel and will soon have the world’s tallest building, the Burj Dubai, which is expected to reach 2,650ft. About 700,000 Britons visit Dubai each year and celebrities reported to have expressed an interest in property include Michael Schumacher, the former Formula One racing champion, and the singers Rod Stewart and Michael Jackson.

The sheer scale of construction by an estimated 300,000 migrants working for 6,000 companies has allowed unscrupulous recruitment agencies and employers to mistreat them.

The suicide rate among Indian workers alone rose from 70 in 2004 to 100 in 2006. Two weeks ago an Indian worker was found hanged from a tree in one camp.

Madusoondanan Achari, 42, from Kerala, southwest India, collapsed and died last week after paying a hefty fee to an agency, only to discover there was no job for him when he reached Dubai.

“It is exploitation by our own people. The workers wouldn’t come if they knew it was for only £80-£90 a month,” said KV Shamsudeen, an Indian businessman who has set up a support group for labourers.

Work-related deaths are another well-kept secret. Officially, 34 workers died on site in 2004. An investigation by Construction Week, a Dubai trade magazine, found 880 migrant construction workers had died that year, although it was unclear how many had been killed at work.

A volunteer named Joseph visits injured workers in hospitals, helping to raise funds to go home. One of his clients is an Indian worker who has been lying in a vegetative state since September when he succumbed to dehydration, fell and was dumped by his employer at the side of the road. His name is still unknown.

The UAE government was jolted last year by a revolt of 2,500 labourers at the Burj Dubai tower. It promised to improve conditions and fine companies for late payment of wages. Yesterday it emerged the government was considering introducing a minimum wage.

A spokesman said the authorities were cracking down on rogue recruitment agencies. But the government has failed to legalise unions despite promising to do so, and human rights activists say many of the changes have not been implemented.

“The legal framework is not very clear for the labourers. There are lots of loopholes through which companies abuse them,” said Mohammed al-Roken, a human rights lawyer who has been banned from writing in local newspapers.

Dissent on construction sites is swiftly stamped out. Two weeks ago 250 workers on the Dubai marina were deported after an 8,000-strong crowd demandeda 25p-a-day rise in their monthly income of £75-£85. Some have had no pay increase since 1990.

It is all a far cry from the lifestyle of the England footballers who treated themselves to the finest villas at Palm Jumeirah on their way to the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea.

The completion of their homes is now imminent. A spokesman for Beckham said he had been told the workers on his property had not been maltreated.

“We have been assured in the past that workers’ rights are being respected and that pay is reflective of the pay in that area. If there is any further information that comes to light then, of course, we will put those points to the developer and ask for answers,” he said.

Nakheel Properties, one of three principal developers in Dubai that manage the main construction sites, including the Palm Jumeirah, said it complied strictly with UAE labour laws. But a spokesman said it was up to contractors to set the pay and living conditions.

A volunteer who helps exploited workers said: “Dubai wants to be a modern-day Las Vegas or Monaco and attract the affluent but it doesn’t care about the people at the bottom.”

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