22/04/2021 Salary Abuses Facing Migrant Workers Ahead of Qatar’s FIFA World Cup 2022 | HRW have to travel to reach the immediate employers of the workforce, which are often small firms DONATE NOW Summary with limited financial resources, unable to pay wages until they have received payment for the work already completed.”[42] The report describes the practice of “pay when paid”, which is commonly incorporated into contracts across the Gulf region in the absence of a 30-day payment cycle imposed by law, as one where contractors are not legally obliged to pay their subcontractors until they have received payment from the client. According to the report, those most affected are often small firms with limited financial resources that cannot pay wages until they have received payment for the work already completed, leaving migrant workers in their employ, who are at the very bottom of the subcontracting hierarchy, the most vulnerable. In anticipation of the World Cup 2022, Qatar has seen a spurt in the growth of labor-only supply companies.[43] Often, these small and medium-sized companies do not possess sufficient funds to pay wages if they themselves suffer delays in payment. Often times, the report states, “while subcontractors and labor suppliers take the blame when it is discovered that wages are delayed, it is seldom considered that they may not have the funds to pay on time.”[44] “I feel bad for them, these are my people after all, they are Nepalis, and I haven’t paid their full salary in 9 months,” said ‘Priya’, a Nepalese owner of a medium-sized labor supply company. [45] “I haven’t been paid by my clients, which means I don’t have money to pay my workers. I paid basic wages to as many workers as I could.” Priya said she had been supplying workers to a construction company that she wished not to name and in December 2019 she had not received payments for work completed for nine months. “If I am not paid, how can I pay my workers?” she said.[46] She told Human Rights Watch that she has many entrepreneur friends similarly stuck. Priya told Human Rights Watch that she is on friendly terms with the owner of the construction company that hired the workers she employs. This owner allegedly confided in Priya about how he himself had not been paid for 2 years. The construction company, a subcontractor, is expecting payments from a large international construction company, the main contractor, which is in turn waiting for payments from a Qatari public entity.[47] Yet habitual insolvency does not let companies like Priya’s off the hook. On the contrary, it underscores the risk to employees when a business model depends on payment of upstream contracts, which are regularly delayed, to cover employee salaries. Employers should ensure that they have the means to pay all their workers on time given a realistic timeline for when they can expect payment on contracts owed to them. To provide additional protection for wages from Qatar’s trickle down “pay when paid” supply chain, Qatar could consider https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/08/24/how-can-we-work-without-wages/salary-abuses-facing-migrant-workers-ahead-qatars 18/62