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Companies in Qatar have failed to pay “hundreds of millions of dollars” in salaries
and other benefits to low-wage workers since the coronavirus outbreak, according
to new research by the human rights group Equidem.
In its report, Equidem describes how thousands of workers have been dismissed
without notice, put on reduced wages or unpaid leave, denied outstanding salary
and end of service payments, or forced to pay for their own flights home.
The report’s findings appear to amount to “wage theft” on an unprecedented scale,
leaving “worker after worker” destitute, short of food and unable to send money
home during the pandemic, in one of the richest countries in the world.
“I came here to work for my family, not to be a beggar living on my own,” said a
cleaner from Bangladesh, who said he had not received his salary for four months.
In separate research, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre found that
unpaid or delayed wages were cited by workers in 87% of cases of alleged labour
abuse affecting almost 12,000 workers since 2016.
Around 2 million migrant workers – mostly from south Asia – work in Qatar, many
on construction projects related to the 2022 World Cup.
Equidem praises some measures put in place by the Qatar government during the
coronavirus pandemic. In March, the government made it mandatory for companies
to continue to pay workers in quarantine or government-imposed isolation, and set
up a £625m loan scheme to help companies do so, but the report warns of
“widespread failure to comply” with this and other regulations.
The government later permitted companies that had stopped operating due to Covid
restrictions to put workers on unpaid leave or terminate their contracts as long as