QATARSUCKS and the world knows it!

The Prague City Court has issued an international warrant for the arrest of Qatari Prince Hamid bin Abdal Sani, who was sentenced to 2.5 years for sex with underage girls in the Czech Republic in 2005, but the verdict is not valid yet, court spokeswoman Martina Lhotakova told CTK Tuesday.

The appeals panel has failed to deliver the court decision and writ of summons to Sani. The trial, which was to start a year ago, has been adjourned several times.

A 43-year-old Qatari national who pleaded guilty this year to being an al Qaeda sleeper agent, Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, was sentenced on Thursday to eight years, nearly half of the time the Justice Department had asked the court for him to serve in prison.

Qatar's National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) on Sunday condemned the widespread abuse of workers' rights in the Gulf state, highlighting harsh working conditions and a lack of adequate healthcare.

The NHRC said in its annual report the Committee received 1,031 complaints of human rights abuses in 2008, with 263 of them related to sponsorship transfer, 51 related to “deportation verdict cancellations” and 56 related to employer-employee disputes, Qatari daily Gulf Times reported on Monday.

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.

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.

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.