The migrant workers in Qatar

It was in 2013 when Qatar came under fire from foreign media because of alleged forced labor, modern day slavery and other accusations pertaining to its treatment of migrant workers especially in the construction sector where most of the workers were recruited from Nepal, India, and the Philippines and from other Asian nations. The sudden outburst of criticism coming from the western media and from various human rights advocates put Qatar in the spotlight. 

It was at this point that Qatar denied all the accusations hurled towards them, but in the end the government, as reported, immediately conducted a thorough investigation and put in place recommendations to further enhance the mechanism in arresting the wanton labor violations being committed against the migrant workers toiling hard in the different locations in Qatar.

But In spite of the purported action taken or enforced by Qatar, the multinational contractors that employs hundreds of thousands of migrant workers were just callous and totally defiant in their actions and dealings with the migrant workers. Most of the employers are big time foreign multinational contractors from the neighboring Arab countries, India, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Spain, France and Britain.

There are many stories of labor violations committed by some of the multinational contractors especially Arab and British employers-yes, British employers. In one of the big construction projects in the heart of Doha, the capital of Qatar, a big British construction company known in the Middle East employs thousands of migrant workers mostly from Nepal and India. The said nationalities received very low salary of QR500/month for unskilled laborers and QR750-850/month for charge hands. A young Indian site engineer related to this writer that the migrant workers were underpaid simply because they are illiterate.

The callousness of some of the multinational construction companies making big time in Qatar is too hard to ignore. Labor violations continue to inflict humiliation and abuse on migrant workers. Beside the degrading low salary, food and poor accommodation causes more damaging effect on the living condition of migrant workers.  Food comes in trickle like one piece of fried fish with rice for dinner or lunch, alternating with old stocked chicken and two pieces of small tasteless hotdogs or sausages for breakfast and two boiled eggs as alternate. The dishes mentioned only served to Filipino migrant workers. Whereas, Nepalese and Indians always given different kinds of leguminous plants or beans cooked with curry and eaten with rice or chapatti or kobos three meals a day.

Poor accommodation is also a problem and it is often seen in the supply migrant workers’ labor camps. Here, violations are too common like no water supply, overcrowded rooms, no ventilation and other major problems like overtime and holiday pay. Most foreign contractors do not follow the implementing rules and regulations of Qatar labor laws on holidays and OT. And worse, other employers intentionally delay the salary of their labor force for months.

Qatar is in a hurry to duplicate or even surpass Dubai and that is why they set their sight to 2020 vision. Construction is in full blast and as such many migrant workers are needed to build mega and super structures. Unfortunately for Qatar they allow multinational construction companies to exert their own cruel standard of anti-labor practices and humiliating treatment of migrant workers.