Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC) praised yesterday Qatar Power Engineering & Contracting (QPEC) and Impactt Limited on the companies' commitment to train its workers in applying safety and security standards at work, and its keenness to involve workers in many of the recreational and community activities that create a family atmosphere on the job site and accommodations.
Since 2016, QPEC has been appointed as a sub-contractor to manage electrical installations at four Qatar 2022 stadiums: Al Bayt, Al Janoub, Education City and Al Rayyan. A team of 250 QPEC workers are engaged at the project sites.
The health, safety and wellbeing of workers are top priorities for QPEC - and it considers the induction process as critical to achieving its objectives. QPEC provides all new hires with a comprehensive overview of the company, each individuals scope of work, safety standards and relevant legislation. To support new hires, QPEC has created audio files containing all the essential information in Hindi - the main employee language - and plays them on the buses shuttling workers between accommodation and construction sites.
The HR Manager at QPEC Ritchie Morcilla, who also serves as a Workers’ Welfare Officer, is responsible for ensuring staff receive in-depth health and safety training.
“We have regular safety training with certified institutions to help workers identify and eliminate potential risks, especially when working at height. This is a pre-requisite for all SC sites and this training has helped us to reinforce our commitment towards safety,” says Ritchie Morcilla, who joined QPEC six years ago.
QPEC provides an annual flight ticket allowance and gives employees a 30% pay rise after they complete a year of service. The company has also adopted the SCs Universal Reimbursement Scheme and is now reimbursing all of its workers QAR 3,500 in monthly instalments to cover any illegal recruitment fees they may have paid prior to moving to Qatar.
“We learnt a lot about ethical recruitment upon getting involved with Qatar 2022 projects. We realized we had gaps to fill. We are committed to working only with registered recruitment agencies now, to ensure workers are not paying any kind of fees. Its the employers responsibility to shoulder these payments,” says Morcilla.
The HR Manager concludes by saying that despite the challenges along the way, QPEC is hugely proud of the progress they have made on workers welfare since joining the SC program, and to be playing a part in building Qatars World Cup stadiums.
