Stranded workers in Doha
Two Saturdays ago, my friend Silvia and I visited a labor camp and a safe house here in Doha to learn more about stranded workers in Qatar.
Stranded workers are workers whose sponsors (i.e., employers) have abandoned them in one way or another. For those of us who are expatriate workers in Qatar, our employers have a much larger role in our lives than they would in the States. Your employer isn't just the person who hires you and pays you; they also provide your housing and possibly your food and, most importantly, they are your gateway to government services. When you first arrive in Qatar, it is your sponsor who gets you a valid visa and residency permit; when you leave, it is your sponsor who gets you an exit visa and a plane ticket home. So workers who have been abandoned by their employers are not just unemployed; they also become illegal immigrants. They can't legally get new jobs, and technically shouldn't still be in the country. Yet, even if they want to leave, they can't get an exit visa, let alone afford to fly home!
We met a Nepalese businessman who has devoted himself to helping workers in this situation in Qatar. A few months ago he opened Mitery Kunja, a safe house for stranded workers. Mitery Kunja currently houses about 70 men, mostly Nepalese. Some are there for only a week or two while their embassy sorts out how to get them home; others have been there since it opened in the fall.
Mitery Kunja Safe House
Mitery Kunja currently houses 70 stranded workers, but can hold up to 200. Currently it has only two toilets, though.
Safe House Notice
I doubt this sign has much legal standing, but it is an effort to protect the safe house inhabitants from arrest.
Card game
Stranded Nepalese workers keep themselves occupied in the safe house while awaiting the paperwork that will allow them to go home.
Kitchen
Until recently they didn't even have the refrigerator.
Kitchen
Dinner!
Mitery Kunja can help individual workers who get stranded, but unfortunately the problem is larger scale than that. In addition to visiting the safe house, we dropped by a labor camp in the Industrial Area, where hundreds of workers were still living after their sponsor abandoned them. They were brought over on two-year contracts to do Asian-Games-related construction, but two months ago their sponsor stopped paying them, then moved offices, and now is nowhere to be found. Hundreds of workers are still in the labor camp, but with no work, no way of getting food, and now no electricity either.
A soft-spoken 26-year-old man from Burma explained in surprisingly fluent English that the situation was even worse than this. Like many low-skilled workers in Qatar, they never got the deal they had been promised by the agents who recruited them in their home countries. They had been promised a starting salary of 550 riyals ($150) a month, which is typical for construction workers, but with pay raises every few months, first to QR750 and eventually to QR950 ($260). "I did the calculations," he said, "and decided to come." These calculations are carefully considered, because low-skilled laborers typically have to pay agents between $1000 and $2000 to come to Qatar. Their whole extended families go into serious debt to send them over here, on the assumption that two years of salary remittances will pay off the debt and then allow the family to better itself.
When we visited, some of the workers had had an opportunity to transfer to another sponsor. This sponsor would only pay them QR400 ($110) a month, though, and that wasn't enough for them to pay off the debt and provide for their families. When Silvia and I asked the men what they wanted to happen, many were desperate to find work at the promised salary, in order to pay of their debt of coming to Qatar. Others were so entirely fed up with the Gulf they just wanted to go home, even though it meant returning to worse poverty than they were trying to escape by coming here in the first place.
A few days after we visited, the Gulf Times reported that 70 of the workers had gotten a sponsorship change. I hope that means they got a better offer than QR400.
Stranded workers
More stranded workers
I sat in on Silvia's class (an elective on immigration issues) when she showed the class these pictures and discussed the issue of low-skilled laborers in Qatar. Students had very mixed opinions, but I was a little disappointed by the widespread assumption that these issues are best taken care of by individual embassies. The Nepalese embassy appears to be doing right by its people, but it's hardly fair that they have to spring for plane tickets home for Nepalese workers who are mistreated by Qatari sponsors. The more I learn about the exit visa/plane ticket home situation, the more appalled I am that expatriate workers can be effectively held hostage by their employers. I don't understand how this isn't in violation of international human rights.
In the week since I visited the labor camps, a barrage of other labor-related articles have hit the local papers. Here's a selection.
Stranded workers are workers whose sponsors (i.e., employers) have abandoned them in one way or another. For those of us who are expatriate workers in Qatar, our employers have a much larger role in our lives than they would in the States. Your employer isn't just the person who hires you and pays you; they also provide your housing and possibly your food and, most importantly, they are your gateway to government services. When you first arrive in Qatar, it is your sponsor who gets you a valid visa and residency permit; when you leave, it is your sponsor who gets you an exit visa and a plane ticket home. So workers who have been abandoned by their employers are not just unemployed; they also become illegal immigrants. They can't legally get new jobs, and technically shouldn't still be in the country. Yet, even if they want to leave, they can't get an exit visa, let alone afford to fly home!
We met a Nepalese businessman who has devoted himself to helping workers in this situation in Qatar. A few months ago he opened Mitery Kunja, a safe house for stranded workers. Mitery Kunja currently houses about 70 men, mostly Nepalese. Some are there for only a week or two while their embassy sorts out how to get them home; others have been there since it opened in the fall.
Mitery Kunja Safe House
Mitery Kunja currently houses 70 stranded workers, but can hold up to 200. Currently it has only two toilets, though.
Safe House Notice
I doubt this sign has much legal standing, but it is an effort to protect the safe house inhabitants from arrest.
Card game
Stranded Nepalese workers keep themselves occupied in the safe house while awaiting the paperwork that will allow them to go home.
Kitchen
Until recently they didn't even have the refrigerator.
Kitchen
Dinner!
Mitery Kunja can help individual workers who get stranded, but unfortunately the problem is larger scale than that. In addition to visiting the safe house, we dropped by a labor camp in the Industrial Area, where hundreds of workers were still living after their sponsor abandoned them. They were brought over on two-year contracts to do Asian-Games-related construction, but two months ago their sponsor stopped paying them, then moved offices, and now is nowhere to be found. Hundreds of workers are still in the labor camp, but with no work, no way of getting food, and now no electricity either.
A soft-spoken 26-year-old man from Burma explained in surprisingly fluent English that the situation was even worse than this. Like many low-skilled workers in Qatar, they never got the deal they had been promised by the agents who recruited them in their home countries. They had been promised a starting salary of 550 riyals ($150) a month, which is typical for construction workers, but with pay raises every few months, first to QR750 and eventually to QR950 ($260). "I did the calculations," he said, "and decided to come." These calculations are carefully considered, because low-skilled laborers typically have to pay agents between $1000 and $2000 to come to Qatar. Their whole extended families go into serious debt to send them over here, on the assumption that two years of salary remittances will pay off the debt and then allow the family to better itself.
When we visited, some of the workers had had an opportunity to transfer to another sponsor. This sponsor would only pay them QR400 ($110) a month, though, and that wasn't enough for them to pay off the debt and provide for their families. When Silvia and I asked the men what they wanted to happen, many were desperate to find work at the promised salary, in order to pay of their debt of coming to Qatar. Others were so entirely fed up with the Gulf they just wanted to go home, even though it meant returning to worse poverty than they were trying to escape by coming here in the first place.
A few days after we visited, the Gulf Times reported that 70 of the workers had gotten a sponsorship change. I hope that means they got a better offer than QR400.
Stranded workers
More stranded workers
I sat in on Silvia's class (an elective on immigration issues) when she showed the class these pictures and discussed the issue of low-skilled laborers in Qatar. Students had very mixed opinions, but I was a little disappointed by the widespread assumption that these issues are best taken care of by individual embassies. The Nepalese embassy appears to be doing right by its people, but it's hardly fair that they have to spring for plane tickets home for Nepalese workers who are mistreated by Qatari sponsors. The more I learn about the exit visa/plane ticket home situation, the more appalled I am that expatriate workers can be effectively held hostage by their employers. I don't understand how this isn't in violation of international human rights.
In the week since I visited the labor camps, a barrage of other labor-related articles have hit the local papers. Here's a selection.
- Kerala-based manpower agencies duped us: workers complain that they aren't getting the deal the agents promised them. Charging workers outrageous "visa fees" and then not even getting them visas seems to be a common move.
- Workers on verge of mental breakdown: workers complain of not being paid and of terrible labor camp conditions.
- 'Abused' maid jumps from first floor in escape bid: male laborers get screwed over on a regular basis, but women appear to be at much higher risk of physical abuse.
- Residents shocked by squalid state of Industrial Area: begins with the telling line, "The misery of workers in labour camps has been so oft-repeated that it has almost become boring."
- Workers say QR15 hike hard to digest: gives an idea of where workers' salaries go.
- Workers languishing in labour camps: another group of stranded workers are both owed money and and are not being allowed to leave the country.