This week’s Amnesty International report into the legal and regulatory system in Qatar that allows appalling treatment of migrant labour also highlighted the role played by late payment in the construction industry – including on contracts run by Western contractors.
In addition, The Dark Side of Migration: Spotlight on Qatar’s Construction Sector ahead of the World Cup refers to all companies’ resposibility to respect human rights, as set out in the UN Framework for Business and Human Rights.
It emphasised that main contractor’s contracts with subcontractors are a vital way of holding subcontractors to account on employment, safety and accommodation, but said that Amnesty researchers had with met representatives of international construction companies that had only just started to think about auditing their supply chains.
The report also comes two weeks before a delegation from the International Trades Union Congress, which will include GMB international officer Bert Schouenberg, is due to visit the country.
The GMB wrote on 22 October to the chief executives of 13 UK-headquartered construction companies operating in Qatar, seeking a meeting during the ITUC visit. Schouenberg told CM last week that so far just four had replied: Balfour Beatty and Costain wrote that they did not currently have any work in Qatar, while Carillion declined the invitation to a meeting.
Laing O’Rourke, however, apparently replied “constructively” and a meeting is likely.
The 170-page report explores the scale of abuse perpetrated against migrant labourers from India, Nepal and other countires who are brought into Qatar by “sponsoring” labour agencies to work for subcontractors in the construction supply chain.
Workers are often given false information about jobs and salaries, and once in Qatar, the sponsorship system and the fact that many have incurred debt to migrate traps them in appalling conditions. Delays or non-payment of wages can leave workers unable to pay for food, or send money to their families.
Researchers found that subcontractors who failed to pay their workers generally blamed cash flow, flowing down from Qatari government-sponsored clients through main contractors.
The report quotes one managing director of a subcontractor, who said: “Ask anyone … There is a big cash-flow problem. [Name of European contractor removed] take 160 days to pay when they are supposed to pay after 90 days. [Name of East Asian contractor removed] pay after 90 days when they are supposed to take 45 days… You book 100 thousand riyals [US$27,463] to pay for IDs [residence permits], then the sponsor [Qatari majority shareholder] is not in Doha [to carry out procedures]. Then you reallocate money. You have a terrible cash flow.”
On the issue of monitoring subcontractors, Amnesty quoted the Qatar Foundation, a not-for-profit body that has launched a code of practice for contractors and subcontractors on migrant welfare that has been backed by the CIOB.
The Qatar Foundation’s view was that: “Rigorous prequalification process for subcontractor selection is not common. It has often been witnessed that main contractors mirror the purported client approach and select based on price, with very little investigation into health, safety or welfare practices.”
The report says that the extent of the abuse of migrant workers in Qatar is not fully clear, and that many migrant workers in Qatar do experience adequate pay and condiditons.
However, in a 2012 survey of 1,189 low-income labour migrants, funded by the Qatar National Research Fund, 90% of migrants said their employers possessed their passports; 21% said they received their salary on time only “sometimes, rarely or never”; and 20% said their salary was different to what they had been promised in their home country.
Although the report studies a number of construction projects in detail and gives details of some of the companies involved, no British or British-owned firms are named in the report.
