As Qatar is in the final stages of preparations to host the world’s most popular sport event, the FIFA Football World Cup, by the end of next year, detractors are yet again trying to distort facts and paint a misshaped portrait of the country.
From the first day since Qatar won the bid for hosting 2022 FIFA World Cup, the country has been facing undue criticism and allegations, often without any proof. Some groups and even some media organisations had made it a practice to hurl accusations against Qatar alleging human rights violations, labour abuses, poor living conditions of workers, discrimination etc, but all unfounded and without proper fact-checking or talking to the so-called affected people.
But Qatar has always welcomed constructive criticism and has taken serious measures to bring in revolutionary changes to the labour laws in the country.
These measures, most of which were a first for the region, have drawn appreciation from an array of international agencies and international trade unions and leaders.
Despite all these, some groups still rake up non-issues just for the sake of criticism.
Yesterday Qatar has expressed its total rejection of Amnesty International’s allegations that labour market reforms have not led to realistic changes that serve hundreds of thousands of migrant workers. In a statement, the Ministry of Labour proved that the litany of allegations levelled by Amnesty in its report entitled “Reality Check 2021: A Year to the 2022 World Cup” are baseless and it just ignored or feigned ignorance of several labour reform measures implemented by Qatar.
Nobody should fail to understand that every resident in Qatar is witnessing the benefits of the labour reforms in the country and everybody is a beneficiary of them in one way or the other. Hundreds of thousands people are freely travelling in and out of the country without obtaining an exit permit as before. Several thousand workers were able to change their sponsorship hassle-free and find greener pastures.
The Highly monitored Wage Protection System ensures that employees in the country are getting their salary and other benefits in a timely manner. It is easier for new recruits to avoid exploitation and cheating as they can ensure they are being recruited by genuine employers before their travel through the Visa Centers being operated by Qatar in several countries..
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Qatar stood apart from other countries by offering world-class treatment free of cost to all the affected people and is offering vaccination to everybody again free.
It is a pity that Amnesty International failed to see any of these facts and it seems that its so-called experts were writing the report generalising isolated cases and passing imbalanced views. But they could at least read social media postings by the residents of the country including the workers.
