22/04/2021 Salary Abuses Facing Migrant Workers Ahead of Qatar’s FIFA World Cup 2022 | HRW living for themselves and their families,” as Qatar is required to ensure under the Summary DONATE NOW International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).[53] Additionally, Qatar’s current wage policy does not protect against the practice of wage discrimination by sex, race, or national origin.[54] Typically, governments and employers should account for the following costs at a minimum when determining the level of a living wage: a living wage : a basic food basket and meal preparation costs, health care, housing and energy, clothing, water and sanitation, essential transportation, children’s education, and important discretionary expenses relevant to the national context in ensuring an adequate standard of living. Qatar should also calculate and enforce an hourly minimum wage and Qatar should set up a committee that periodically reviews the minimum wage levels so that it guarantees a living wage. Moreover, the Labour Dispute Resolution Committees do not apply to workers excluded in the labor law. They are also taking longer than expected to resolve disputes and some workers still face major hurdles in reclaiming unpaid wages.[55] The Wage “Protection” System According to “Assessment of the Wage Protection System in Qatar”, a 2019 report authored by Dr. Ray Jureidini and issued by the International Labour Organization (ILO) Project Office for the State of Qatar, since the establishment of the WPS, 1.3 million workers and over 50,000 companies have been registered with the software.[56] However, roughly 700,000 workers remain unprotected, particularly those who work with small enterprises, and those who are deliberately excluded by the WPS such as domestic workers and agricultural workers working on small farms.[57] Evidence laid out in the report suggests that the Wage Protection System is a misnomer for a software that, in reality, does little to protect wages, and at best, can be better described as a wage monitoring system with significant gaps in its oversight capacity. Companies in Qatar must register with the WPS in order to pay workers electronically by the seventh day of the month; employers do this by opening an account in any of the approved banks in Qatar. [58] Every month the employer submits a document titled the Salary Information File (SIF) for each worker to the bank.[59] This file contains the worker’s identity details and how much they are owed by the company. The bank then distributes salaries into each worker’s account and is meant to notify them via SMS, at which point workers can withdraw salaries using company-issued ATM cards. The Salary Information File is also automatically forwarded to the WPS Unit at the Ministry of Administrative Labour and Social Affairs (MADLSA, or the labor ministry), where it is the job of employees called “checkers” and “blockers” to deal with any wage abuses to which the https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/08/24/how-can-we-work-without-wages/salary-abuses-facing-migrant-workers-ahead-qatars 20/62