New York: Qatari authorities failed to address an employer’s months of delayed wages to employees despite a 2015 system built to ensure employers paid their employees on time and in full, Human Rights Watch has said.
The government’s Wage Protection System (WPS), designed to ensure that workers receive their salaries through direct bank transfer by the seventh day of every month, allows the government to monitor wage payments and allows the labour minister to impose sanctions on companies and employers that do not comply.
But a Qatari employer did not pay its managerial staff for five months and its labourers for two months before workers publicly protested the situation.
“Qatar has passed some laws to protect migrant workers, but the authorities seem more interested in promoting these minor reforms in the media than in making them work,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
“Fifa and the Qatari government should ensure that any employer that has delayed payments immediately releases them, as well as levy appropriate fines.”
Qatar’s 2022 Fifa World Cup organiser, the quasi-governmental Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, has also adopted measures to protect workers on World Cup sites, setting stringent rules for contractors. The rules require setting up worker welfare committees to report abuses on these sites.
Many of the managerial-level staff with this employer received the five months of payments they were owed on February 13, 2020, and those who have not are expecting them on February 16.
All the labourers Human Rights Watch spoke to received the two months of payments they were owed on February 7.
Staffers and labourers said they were told by senior management that the government stepped in to make the payments.
Human Rights Watch spoke to 11 workers under this employer – seven from management, three labourers, and a former management staff member – and reviewed relevant documentation, including five official memos asking management staff to keep working to maintain the “reputation of the (employer).”
All seven management staff members said that the employer failed to pay at least 500 managerial staff such as engineers, surveyors, and supervisors beginning in September 2019.
While Human Rights watch documented the problems under one employer, the findings expose a systemic failure that has a bearing on all employers operating in Qatar, Human Rights Watch said.
The management staff said they reported to work without pay under threat of deductions until several staff members decided to stop working until they were paid.
The employer and their top-level management also made similar threats to keep labourers working throughout December and January.
During this time, the labourers remained in their employer-provided accommodations and were provided regular meals. Management staff arrange for their own room and board.
The employer engages over 6,000 workers and has over 25 current projects in Qatar. These include a stadium in Doha, which will host Fifa World Cup 2022 matches, the streets surrounding the stadium, and a road-building project to connect Doha’s areas to several Fifa World Cup stadiums.
“I was so miserable, my wife is having a baby soon,” said one 32-year-old surveyor who received four months of salary on February 13.
“I was supposed to go to India for the delivery. Instead, I had no money to live in Qatar, I am in thousands of riyals of debt, and there is a potential travel ban on me (because of defaulting on a bank loan).
“How did this happen to me?”