She didn't pay "hundreds of millions of dollars" in salaries
Report: Qatar companies steal workers' wages, leaving them destitute
A report by a human rights organization revealed that companies in Qatar have not paid "hundreds of millions of dollars" in salaries and benefits to low-wage workers, since the outbreak of the new Corona virus, to increase their suffering in one of the richest countries in the world.
A report by "Equidem", a human rights organization, said that thousands of workers were dismissed without prior notice, given reduced wages or unpaid leave, deprived of salary and end-of-service payments, or forced to bear the costs of flights to return to Their countries.
The findings of the report amount to the level of "wage theft" on an unprecedented scale, which made workers destitute and suffering shortages of food, and unable to send money to their families in their home countries during the epidemic, according to the British newspaper "The Guardian".
A cleaning worker from Bangladesh, who has not received his salary for four months, said, "I came here to work for my family, not to be a beggar living alone."
The British newspaper cited separate research by the Business and Human Rights Resource Center, which found that in 87 percent of the “worker abuse” cases that have affected nearly 12,000 workers since 2016, they were related to unpaid or late wages.
About 2 million foreign workers, most of them from South Asia, work in Qatar, many of them on construction projects related to the 2022 World Cup.
Although Equidim indicated that the Qatari government took some measures during the Corona pandemic to give workers their rights, such as obliging companies to continue paying workers' salaries during quarantine or closure orders, but the report warns of a “widespread failure to comply” with these laws and other regulations.
Later, the Qatari government allowed companies that stopped working due to the epidemic to give workers unpaid leave, or to terminate their contracts as long as they comply with the requirements of the labor law, including giving a notice period and paying benefits due.
The report sheds light on some of the violations that workers have been subjected to in Qatar. For example, about two thousand workers working for one construction company were laid off "immediately".
Most of them did not receive their outstanding salaries or end of service settlement, a payment equivalent to 3 weeks' salary for each full year of work.
"Many foreign workers are in a very vulnerable position, with no real ability to assert their rights or seek redress for violations," the report said.
"The lack of a legal right to organize or join unions was harmful ... it prevented workers from getting seats at a table with the government and employers to negotiate a fair share of the money," said Equidem director Mustafa Qadri.
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