This data has the effect of a slap on the face when one reads that Qatar refused to raise the minimum wage paid to Filipino domestic servants to $400 a month. A Filipino cleaning lady earns about $200 a month in Qatar, often without a weekly day off and the most serious aspect is that low wages are the least of her problems.
According to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the conditions experienced by many foreign workers in Qatar can only be described as 21st century slavery. In Qatar, 99% of the private sector labour force consists of foreigners whose passports are often confiscated and who are forbidden from forming trade unions or associations, reports Human Rights Watch (HRW).
According to HRW there have been many reports of abuse and violations of the rights of registered workers ranging from non-payment to overcrowded accommodation with no access to drinking water. The HRW’s report on Qatar for 2013 states that human trafficking and forced labour are serious issues in the emirate which has not introduced legislation to oppose these phenomena.
The country’s real tragedy is experienced by over 1.2 million foreign workers who represent the majority of Qatar’s population, which amounts to a total of less than 2 million inhabitants. Most of them work in the construction sector, which is experiencing a boom in view of Doha hosting the 2022 Football World Championships. Indian, Nepalese and Filipino workers are employed on Doha’s construction sites for stadiums, hotels, apartment buildings and shopping malls. Work goes on even when temperatures rise well-above 40 degrees. By law work on construction sites stops in Qatar if temperatures rise above 50 degrees, but many workers feel unwell before such extreme temperatures are reached. When one reads in the press that a workman has fallen from the scaffolding of a skyscraper under construction, there are few possibilities, an accident caused by a lack of respect for safety standards, suicide, or faintness caused by the heat. In any case a tragedy that could have been avoided by improving working conditions. In the past three years, 44 Indian workmen have died in Qatar because of falls or workplace accidents and the numbers are rising.
According to the Secretary General of the ITUC, Sharan Burrow, more workers will die building the stadiums for the 2022 World Championships in Qatar than players participating.
Life is hard also for those who decide to abandon these conditions since foreign workers in Doha cannot leave Qatar without authorisation from their employers who must sign an exit permit. According to the emirate’s laws, a foreign worker cannot even change his job without first being given permission. They are to all effects prisoners.
Jayraj Maria Thankaiyan is Indian working on a construction site in Doha and has not been paid for three months. There are 30 other workmen in the same situation and their salaries amount to a little over $100 a month. This results in them being even more ‘imprisoned’ since they do not even have enough money to decide to leave Qatar and return home to their families in India which become hungrier by the day.
Thankaiyan is one of the few to overcome his fear and shyness, speaking in front of an Al Jazeera camera to denounce his situation.
This is an attempt that has fallen on deaf ears among the wealthy in Qatar who are not prepared to share part of the country’s wealth to make bearable the lives of about 90% of its people.
Translated by Francesca Simmons