Qatar ready to launch migrant labor reforms
Qatar is expected to launch a controversial set of labor reforms aimed at guaranteeing that the country’s migrant workers are paid on time.
The Wage Protection System (WPS) is expected to be carried out on Tuesday after a six-month grace period for businesses to pay migrant workers regularly expires.
The WPS requires businesses to pay migrant workers electronically, mostly those working on 2022 World Cup-related projects in the country, once or twice a month.
This comes as Qatar has been under pressure by rights groups over rights abuse allegations by migrant workers.
Failure to pay the workers on time may result in the imprisonment of business managers and companies may have to pay fines of up to 6,000 Qatari riyals (USD 1,650).
Companies failing to comply with the regulations may also risk being banned from recruiting new staff.
According to a 2013 academic study titled "Portrait of Low-Income Migrants in Contemporary Qatar," as many as a fifth of Qatar’s migrant workers were “sometimes, rarely, or never” paid on time.
However, rights group Amnesty International says the new regulations must open the way for further reforms on other issues, including the controversial “kafala” system, which prevents foreign workers from leaving the country and has at times been compared to modern-day slavery.
Amnesty previously criticized Qatar for its abuse of migrant workers’ rights in a report released back in May, which claimed that some 441 Indian and Nepalese workers had died in 2014 while working on World Cup projects.
The group also accused Doha of using the reforms as a public relations stunt aimed at ensuring the World Cup event would go along as planned.
Human rights organizations have also repeatedly accused Qatar of not doing enough to investigate the effect of working long hours in temperatures that often exceed 50 degrees centigrade.
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