QATARSUCKS and the world needs to know!

A study conducted jointly by the Supreme Council for Family Affairs and Qatar University revealed that 160 women were exposed to abuse or sexual harassment during their childhood, prompting calls for stringent measures for protecting women.

The study was conducted on 2,787 girls from the Faculty of Literature and Science in Qatar University. Of those studied, 2,365 were nationals.

Many low-income workers in Qatar end up losing their jobs due to psychiatric disorders resulting from work-related problems, according to a senior official of the Psychiatry Department at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).

Financial problems coupled with poor living conditions and difficult job circumstances have caused a rise in psychiatric disorders among unskilled and semi-skilled workers in the country.

DUBAI: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries should adopt a common strategy to address problems related to expatriate workers, a top Bahraini labor expert has said.

According to Mohammed Dito, who has held senior posts in Bahrain's labor ministry and its Economic Development Board (EDB) and also serves the International Labor Organisation (ILO), the GCC member states should work in close coordination to work out a common strategy to tackle this complex problem.

Thirty-four-year-old Rina (not her real name) looks like any capable migrant worker who has endured her fair share of hardship while working overseas.

Rina started work as a domestic helper in Qatar in 1992. Since she was only 17 at the time, she had to change her surname and age on her passport to be allowed to work overseas.

The charge has been made by the Nepalese workers' union: 2,000 cases in Qatar, 4,000 in the Arab emirates and Malaysia. The foreign minister has asked his embassies to verify these cases, and stop conversions made by force or external pressure.

More and more Nepalese emigrants who have gone to Muslim majority countries to work - for example, on the Arabian Peninsula - are abandoning their Hindu religion and embracing Islam in order to improve their economic and social situation.

The global recession is causing a heightened sense of job insecurity among millions of migrant workers making them more vulnerable to abuse, say migrant rights advocates.

The slowdown in the global economy has already compelled many companies to retrench workers and stop hiring. The International Labor Organization(ILO) forecasts that the crisis will result in the loss of some 20 million jobs, with migrant workers among the most likely to be retrenched.

Media here have a clear role to play in highlighting issues like the latent racism which apparently exists in Qatar. In doing so, media can highlight such issues to the public and bring them to the attention of the higher authorities here.

While their countrymen dined on lavish Christmas meals, seven Filipino welders, who recently lost their jobs, begged for food at the Corniche and Fish Market here in order to have something to eat.

They are among the 23 foreign workers who were laid-off when the construction company they were working for closed shop about four months ago.

Instead of going home, they decided to stay and fight for their salaries equivalent to four months which the company failed to give them. Their case is being heard by a local labor court.

Gulf states are seeking to buy people's silence through state hand-outs while unskilled foreign workers are living in conditions 'unacceptable to cats and dogs,' according to a leading Bahraini newspaper editor.

The plight of laborers appears to be more gruesome in the Gulf, where the expatriate workers’ vulnerability is greater than that of illegal immigrants in the US and Europe, a leading international expert on migration has said.

Alejandro Portes, director of the Center for Migration & Development at the Princeton University, US, told Gulf Times: “This is a peculiar situation. Because even the illegal residents in the US and Europe can at least change employers as they are not attached to a single one.”

A Nepali worker who broke his leg at a worksite accident some 15 months ago, has been left without proper treatment as his employer failed to inform the police about the incident. The worker claimed that he was “warned by his company” not to inform the police about the accident that took place on June 20 last year.

The 39-year-old electrician met with the accident 32 days after his arrival in Qatar. He fractured his leg after falling from a ladder at the company’s worksite in Wakrah.

The Ministry of Labor has suspended or warned more than 850 companies this year for violating various labor laws and stopped dealing with them till they comply with all sections of the laws.

Labor ministry inspectors conducted raids, over the last eight months, to identify firm that violated the law.

Inspectors were deployed to company premises, works sites and accommodations to check whether health and safety requirements were fulfilled as per Qatar's labor law.

Transactions with companies have been suspended for different period of time in accordance to the type of violation.

A number of small businesses have been accused of exploiting their workers by denying them simple benefits laid down in Qatar’s labor law.

According to some employees – many of whom put in long hours in grocery stores, restaurants, cafeterias, juice stalls and convenience shops – their bosses are routinely flouting the rules because they know they can get away with it.

A group of construction workers have been sleeping in the open for the past eight months – because it is better than living in the “hell” of labor camp accommodation.

Five men, four from North Africa and a south Asian, were seen bedding down for the night next to an under-construction 7-storey residential building at 11pm in the heart of Doha on Wednesday.
“It is an irony that we build these ‘residential apartments’ and don’t have a roof to sleep under,” said one visibly exhausted worker.