Reportage
Migrant workers in Qatar: 'I love football, but I won't be able to attend matches'
Lusail stadium.
Inaugurated on November 22, 2021, it will host the opening match and the final of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. © Anne Bernas/RFI
Text by: Anne Bernas Follow
9 mins
If there is one subject that the World Cup in Qatar has highlighted, it is the question of migrant workers.
They represent nearly 95% of the emirate's workforce and their living conditions have been in the headlines for several months.
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From our special correspondent in Doha,
“
I love football, but I won't be able to attend the matches.
The ticket price is much too expensive and in addition I will have too much work for a month.
Eyes lost in thought, Hamad* cannot hide his disappointment at not being able to experience the football World Cup as it takes place in the country where he lives.
Arrived from Bangladesh four months ago, the 25-year-old boy is one of some 2.8 million foreigners who have come to Qatar in the hope of making a fortune.
While some succeed, others are less fortunate.
Servants, workers, security guards, they do all the dirty work in the country, sometimes at the risk of their lives.
According to the
Guardian
, 6,500 of them died on the construction sites of the Mondial.
A controversial figure (the Qatari authorities reporting on their side 37 direct deaths) but which gives an overview of the reality.
NGOs warn
For several months, many NGOs have been constantly warning about the living conditions of these workers: excessive working hours, confiscation of passports, unpaid wages, violation of human rights, etc.
Amnesty International,
among others, has collected many testimonies to this effect.
Faced with the influx of criticism and calls for a boycott of the World Cup because, among other things, of the situation of these migrant workers, the Qatari authorities launched a reform in 2020 aimed at improving the living conditions of migrants, including the official abolition of
kafala
(a system of sponsorship linking the worker to his boss).
A reform without equivalent in the region, but which is difficult to put in place.
Last August, a dozen foreign workers who dared to demonstrate to demand their unpaid wages were expelled from the emirate.
► To read also: Is football part of the culture of Qatar?
Construction continues in the Qanat district of Doha.
© Anne Bernas/RFI
Fate at work
Hamad doesn't really complain, he has this “
lucky job of working in the luxury hotel industry and not in construction
”.
Some of the 183 new hotels built to accommodate supporters during the World Cup are still not finished, and migrants are working hard to have everything finished by November 20.
Cranes and skyscrapers, such is Doha, which comes out of the ground a little more each day thanks to the sweat of this foreign workforce.
“
I would have preferred to go to the Emirates,
confides Hamad,
but it was complicated for the papers, and in addition I did not speak English.
Now it's better, I'm missing some vocabulary but I manage with a translation app on my phone.
" The young man works ten hours a day, "
but unlike my colleagues, I have two days off a week,
he rejoices.
Except during the World Cup, I will only have one day off.
One more day without knowing if he will be paid.
The young man earns 1,400 ryals a month, around 390 euros – four times less than the price of a bottle of hard liquor in the hotel where he works.
Thanks to the tips, he can put some money aside and above all, like all migrant workers, send some to his relatives back home.
“
I am an only child, they are really counting on me, especially this year because their rice harvest has been very bad
,” he says facing the sea in the Katara district north of Doha.
This Wednesday, Hamad is on rest, he left aside his red suit for shorts and a Hawaiian hat.
With his seven friends in a room - paid for by his employer - he likes to come to this area, even if the restaurants along the beach are not in his purse.
“
Where we live, an hour and a half from here by transport, there is nothing, not even a park.
We have nothing to do.
In the evening, I watch videos on my phone.
I dream of discovering Japan and South Korea!
In Doha, migrants, Nepalese, Bangladeshis, Indians, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Ugandans, Cameroonians, etc., live on the outskirts of the capital, far from the eyes of tourists, in often unsanitary neighborhoods.
For seven years, on the website of the Ministry of Municipalities and Urban Planning, maps have also mentioned the districts of Doha where immigrants are prohibited from living.
The Katara cultural village, inaugurated in 2010. © Anne Bernas/RFI
Underlying racism
Like many of his friends, Hamad admits feeling a certain form of racism from the approximately 300,000 Qataris in the country.
“
They make us feel that we are inferior to them.
It's like that.
We must not react because in any case, whatever happens, we will be guilty.
It must be said that in the emirate, migrants and Qataris do not mix, anywhere.
And this is visible even in the clothing of the population: only Qataris wear the
abaya
(long black tunic that covers the body and face of women), while Qataris proudly wear the
dishdasha
, the long traditional white tunic and a white keffiyeh that falls on their shoulders.
For the moment, the young hotelier intends to stay working in Doha, even if he fears the workload he will have during the month of the World Cup.
“
I dream, when I have enough money, of returning to Bangladesh.
To buy cows, to become a farmer.
»
If the young Bangladeshi, like his colleagues who work in the services, will not be unemployed until the end of the World Cup, the same is not true for construction workers.
According to a French expatriate in charge of the maintenance of the Doha metro, all construction migrants were sent back to their respective countries during the World Cup, at the expense of the emirate.
Objective: that the expected million and a half tourists do not see the reality of the country.
Doha in pictures
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