DOHA, June 21: On the outskirts of Doha, capital of one of the world’s richest countries, migrant workers who have helped build the city’s glittering skyscrapers and luxury shopping malls live in conditions akin to a shantytown.
Clothes hang along a wall at a camp for migrant workers in the Doha Industrial Area next to piles of garbage and abandoned car parts, while petrol from an overflowing tank drips onto the ground and the air reeks of the stench from an open sewer. Indoors, a single rusty hob covered in grime suffices as kitchen equipment.
Bhanu, a Nepalese worker living in the camp, says he puts up with such conditions because he can earn more than he ever could in his own country.
‘I’m here so that I can send money home,’ he said.
But as Qatar prepares to host the 2022 World Cup soccer tournament, and is pouring billions of dollars into an infrastructure programme that will require vast number of foreign workers, its treatment of migrant labour is coming under the international spotlight.
There is no minimum wage in this tiny Gulf Arab state, so while workers like Bhanu might be glad to have a job when there are few back home and pay is higher, their wages typically range from 8 dollar to 11 dollar a day, and are sometimes as low as 6.75 dollar a day – paltry for a country that boasts a per capita income of around 100,000 dollar, one of the highest in the world.
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report this month condemning abuses it found in Qatar, calling for an overhaul of labour practices well ahead of the 2022 tournament.
‘We met a group of seven Nepali workers at (Qatar’s flagship sports complex) Aspire Zone, who said that their employer had not paid them for nearly four months, and that they wanted to return home to Nepal but their employer refused to give their passports back,’ Human Rights Watch Middle East researcher Priyanka Motaparthy told Reuters in the Qatari capital.
‘We interviewed workers on Doha’s new airport who said they had illegal wage deductions – employers who had taken money out of their monthly paychecks.’ (agencies)
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