Property developer and Glasgow Rangers non-executive director Ian Russell aims to raise $100m to improve the quality of housing for construction workers in Dubai.

A director of Glasgow Rangers football club has started a fund that aims to improve the quality of housing for construction workers in Dubai.

Property developer and Rangers non-executive director Ian Russell aims to raise $100m for investment in Dubai's rapidly expanding commercial property market. One of the business opportunities identified by the fund, Caledonian Developments (Dubai), is the need for better quality housing for construction labourers in the region, who have allegedly complained of squalid living conditions.

The fund, which was launched last week, aims to attract investment from wealthy Scottish and English businessmen and footballers, and will target sites around investment parks to build modular-type accommodation with proper sanitation facilities.

Russell told Scotland's Sunday Herald the fund would buy land and build construction worker camps, and would lease them back to the major construction companies in Dubai.

A report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch last week claimed that foreign workers in the region were living in overcrowded rooms.

The Dubai government has tried to respond to the concerns during the past six months by setting up a 24-hour labour-complaint hotline to the police, among other measures.