22/04/2021 Salary Abuses Facing Migrant Workers Ahead of Qatar’s FIFA World Cup 2022 | HRW Summary DONATE NOW A migrant worker working as a shop assistant waits for customers at Souq Waqif in Central Doha. Apart from the laborers building the infrastructure of the country, migrant workers also work as cleaners, restaurant staff, security guards, shop assistants, drivers, and stewards; they shoulder the hospitality sector’s efforts to accommodate the influx of people expected to visit the country in 2022 © 2019 Maham Javaid/Human Rights Watch By contrast, many of the migrant workers laboring to build the stadiums, the metro system, the highways, parking lots, bridges, hotels, and other infrastructure needed to host the millions of visitors the World Cup event is expected to attract, are paid a pittance. So are the cleaners, restaurant staff, security guards, drivers, and stewards who will shoulder the hospitality sector’s efforts to accommodate the influx of people expected to visit the country. Currently, a migrant worker’s basic minimum wage in Qatar is a meager QR750 ($206) per month, which, when paid on time and in full, is hardly enough for many workers to pay back recruitment debts, support families back home, and afford basic needs while in Qatar.[14] ‘Kevin’, a 35-year-old security guard from Kenya whose family back home is harassed on a daily basis for the loan Kevin has not paid back yet, explains: “I paid 120,000 Kenyan Shillings [$1,123] as recruitment fees for a job Qatar in 2017. At my salary and the overtime payment promised in the contract, I should have been able to pay it back in a year. But you see, the company delays payments, and never pays for overtime work, so I take more loans, to feed myself and my family back home. I keep going further and further in debt. Sometimes I think there is no way out. I will be trapped here working forever.”[15] Unfortunately, many workers who came to Qatar hoping to earn enough to pay medical bills for sick parents, pay for children’s school fees, save up money to get married or build homes in https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/08/24/how-can-we-work-without-wages/salary-abuses-facing-migrant-workers-ahead-qatars 11/62