Qatar is yet again drawing a burst of applause from international trade organisations for fair treatment of its expatriate workforce in the country.
For years the country has been taking effective steps to ensure the welfare of its huge number of migrant workers who hail mainly from the Asian countries.
The number of workers has seen a major leap in the past few years after Qatar was awarded the rights to host the FIFA 2022 World Cup. Work on several world-class stadiums, roads, hotels and other infrastructure facilities are progressing ahead of schedule in Qatar to ensure the smooth conduct of the world’s most popular sport event.
On Sunday, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) welcomed Qatar’s steps in reimbursing the fees charged by intermediaries for bringing in 30,000 migrant workers for the construction of the World Cup facilities. By the end of March, more than 5,500 people from across South Asia, — over a third of the workforce – will recover the money they have paid to agents who hired them to work in Qatar, the ITUC said. It added that Qatar is negotiating with a number of mediators to recover fee paid by the rest of the construction workers, which is expected to reach 30,000 by next year.
Dealing with the recruitment fees is part of the efforts of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy to ensure the rights of the workers. This is despite the fact that the workers pay money to recruitment agents in their home countries and the host country cannot be held responsible for it. Workers recruited for Qatar are not the only people who bear the scourge of recruitment fee, it is a global challenge. ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow said that cleaning up the recruitment process of migrant workers should be a top priority to ensure that the workers get the jobs and wages they signed up for and to stop the unlawful recruitment fees which forces the workers into debt bondage.
Qatar is playing a leading role in the Herculean task of cleaning the recruitment process and it is setting an example for other countries to follow.
Qatar is also in the process of establishing a Workers’ Support Fund to ensure that the workers are getting their dues from their employers. The Fund will pay the workers their dues and later it will get the amount reimbursed from the employers by legal means.
Qatar is making tremendous progress in ensuring the rights of the migrant workforce as the country considers them as guests. In a couple of years Qatar will be the best worker-friendly county in the world.
