There where the Orange Legion ran chasing and singing after the Orange bus and where tens of thousands of Argentinian fans celebrated their World Cup title exuberantly.
Now the boulevard is empty. The gaudy billboards with World Cup commercials and the luxury shops and restaurants that were mainly there for the fans are still there, some are closed. McDonalds is open, but even there is no customer.
Sarah also has nothing to do, there are hardly any guests in the restaurant in the hot afternoon in Doha. The Tunisian would become a manager, she was promised when she went to Qatar just before the World Cup. But instead she cleans tables for a salary below minimum wage. “After the World Cup there is not enough work, I pretty much do everything on my own here, work 12-hour days, six days a week,” she says.
Leaving is not an option for Sarah, although she would prefer to do so, but she is tied to a five-year contract. “And I can use the little money I earn here to set up my own company in Tunisia,” she says with a cautious smile. Although she hates it, at least she has a job and gets paid.
Most migrant workers have a more difficult time.
In a migrant compound in the town of Al-Wakra, just outside Doha, five migrant workers lie in their bunk beds in a small room, looking aimlessly at their phones. There is hardly any talking, nor any work.
There has been almost no work in Qatar since the World Cup was over. About 80 percent of the jobs disappeared after the World Cup. If there is ever a vacancy, dozens, sometimes hundreds of migrants come forward. The Ghanaian Samuel
experienced this firsthand. “We’re out of luck.”
Baby never seen
Samuel, 37 years old with a friendly smile, came to Qatar just before the World Cup to earn money for his family and his 90-year-old mother. His wife was five months pregnant with their third child when he left Ghana.
The girl has arrived, but Samuel has not seen her yet. An intermediary in Ghana promised him mountains of gold if he quickly went to Qatar, after all, the World Cup was big business, it would bring him bags of money. He did have to give him 1200 dollars to arrange things.
Samuel has now paid off that debt with the few cents he earned just before and during the World Cup, but since the tournament has ended, there are no more jobs for him. His family for whom he did this has not seen anything yet. “I feel responsible for my children in Ghana. It’s so stressful,” he says.
There is no question of going back to Ghana. “I can’t afford the ticket and I keep hoping that I will succeed. We Ghanaians never give up.”
His friend Daniel
agrees. He still had work after the World Cup, but the payments suddenly failed. He worked for a company that made banners and flags for the World Cup. That has almost come to a standstill in recent months. Together with colleagues, he went to court. Most don’t dare for fear of their employer, but Daniel had nothing to lose, he says. “I couldn’t even afford my own food and rent.”
It didn’t make much sense to go to the Labor Court, where you can only go without pay after three months. “The judge ruled that my boss had to let me go so that I can find another job. Nothing was said about my back pay. I can forget that.” He left that company, can do a job now and then, but he lives mainly on a little money that his sister sends him. That while the idea was that he would support his family from Qatar.
Before the World Cup there was a lot to do around 2 million migrant workers (90 percent of the population of Qatar), it is that quiet now. The Qatari government is said to have improved a number of things under international pressure in the years before the World Cup, such as an increase in the minimum wage to 225 euros per month. It would also be easier to change employers and if the migrants’ passports were no longer taken. Changes for the stage These reforms were called a victory by pundits. World football’s governing body FIFA spoke of a lasting legacy for better labor rights in Qatar and the country’s government described it as a “great step forward”. And yes, since its introduction in 2020, 400,000 workers have been able to change jobs and 280,000 people have received higher wages.
But now that the World Cup is over, the changes are mainly on stage, migrants, labor organizations and human rights organizations have told RTL Nieuws. “It is a paper reality,” says Ruud Bosgraaf of Amnesty International. “The companies where the migrant workers work no longer adhere to it. The eyes of the world are no longer so focused on Qatar. So it has become a bit of business as usual again.” Also
these agreements
that the Dutch government made with Qatar at the beginning of this year still have the desired result.
Supervision of compliance with the rules is still lacking, says Bosgraaf. “There is no such thing as a labor inspectorate.” This is confirmed by Max Tunon, who heads the office of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Qatar. Because the ILO here is financed by Qatar, this organization has often been remarkably enthusiastic about the reforms.
This to the dismay of, for example, the critical trade union BWI, which was expelled from the country immediately after the World Cup. No reason was given for this, the boss of the union told Trouw. “Before and during the World Cup we had a constructive dialogue, but now there is radio silence”
Complaints not handled properly
Yet Tunon of the ILO is also concerned about how things are going in Qatar. “We received almost 30,000 complaints in a year. After the World Cup, this will continue unabated. By far the most complaints are about unpaid salaries.” Those complaints are answered very late or not at all. “That has to be improved”, says Tunon.
The situation is especially bad in sectors that have partly come to a standstill after the World Cup, such as construction and all suppliers, the catering industry and other services. Migrants who still have work do not receive a salary late or sometimes even for months. All but a few are negative and pessimistic about the situation.
The 40-year-old Aahan
from India, unlike many others who are afraid of reprisals from their employer, is happy to tell his story, because he thinks that the media attention to the situation has died down: “First we built the stadiums, the metro and hotels so that the world could enjoy football. We are abandoned as a thank you.”
The construction worker still has a job, at one of the few construction projects that is still being worked on after the World Cup. He is building a factory near the Lusail Stadium, where the Netherlands lost to Argentina and the World Cup final took place.
Aahan is standing in the shade calling his sister, a cloth on his head against the heat. “My sister says I should come back to India to take care of my sick father and because I haven’t received a salary for three months.”
There are many people like Aahan who are without a salary for months. “When we ask about our money, they say it will come. And sometimes they tell us that the money is gone. It’s hard for me to believe that.” Salary deprivation was common among workers in Qatar even before the World Cup, according to reports from Amnesty and Human Rights Watch (HRW). It looks like it’s gotten worse.
Anyway too late
In addition, the reforms, which are rather disappointing in practice, came much too late, says human rights lawyer Minky Worden, director of Global Initiatives at Human Rights Watch. “It was too late anyway to help the workers who sacrificed their lives to make the World Cup possible. Thousands of workers have died building the stadiums and infrastructure.”
Tens of thousands of migrants who survived their World Cup jobs have often returned to their countries disillusioned, even with outstanding debts to intermediaries and agencies who arranged for more than 1000 euros to go to Qatar.
Qatar’s promise that they could recover these amounts through a contribution from the employers has hardly materialised. Only a few percent of the workers who worked for the government and suffered health problems in one way or another during World Cup work, received (part of) the amount back. And that’s what Qatar and FIFA have to say: ‘you see that we’re compensating them’.
The vast majority of migrants did not receive a penny of the brokerage fees. Qatar does say that a few ‘illegal’ offices abroad have been closed. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. According to human rights organizations and migrants themselves, new workers are still entering the country with false promises every day.
They borrow money from friends and family to pay for the desks and then stand in the back of the queue for a job in Qatar. “Don’t come here,” warns the Ghanaian Daniel from the migrant compound. “No one wants to be in Qatar now. It is hopeless.” Still, he keeps the hope that he can find new work and still earn money, with which he hopes to be able to go to Europe. “Because it’s better organized there, isn’t it?”
Is there nothing positive to report about Qatar after the World Cup? Yes, the heat measures seem to be adhered to. In the summer months, people are no longer allowed to work between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., in the heat of the day.
This week there was a meeting in Qatar of various Gulf states in which they exchanged ideas on how to deal with the heat. The housing of migrants is also better. Many houses have been built where they can stay reasonably decent.
And there really are also employees who do get paid and are satisfied with the meager salary with which they can support their families. It is always more than they could ever earn in their own country. Like the Kenyan security guard who keeps an eye on things at the Lusail Stadium. “I am grateful to Qatar and I think it will only get better in the coming years,” he says earnestly.
Yes, Qatar has drawn up a vision, which states that by 2030 the country must be transformed into ‘a society in which sustainability is of great importance and a high standard of living for the population must be secured’. But a great deal still needs to be done to achieve this and it is to be hoped that this ‘population’ will also include all foreign workers.
For Aahan, Sarah, Daniel, Samuel and the many thousands of other migrant workers who ran into problems after the World Cup, 2030 is far too late anyway.
* Not the real names, these have been anonymized for the safety of the speakers.
What does Qatar itself say, and the KNVB? RTL News has submitted a number of questions to the organization of the World Cup in Qatar and the Ministry of Labor in the country by email, but no answer has been received. Even after reminders via email and telephone, there was no response. The KNVB wants to say something. No country boycotted the World Cup, not even the Netherlands. The KNVB was critical of human rights in Qatar. The football association promised to continue to support the migrants after the World Cup. “We have also heard that there seems to be a certain fatigue in terms of reforms in Qatar,” said KNVB spokesperson Jaap Paulsen. “In short, the KNVB is trying to do the right thing, but we are also aware that we need others to achieve things in Qatar, for example.” Together with other federations, the KNVB tries to keep human rights on the agenda on a structural basis, for example by encouraging the establishment of a human rights committee within FIFA. The distribution of the proceeds from the auction of the Orange World Cup shirts (about 380,000 euros) is very difficult. Only 80,000 euros was spent, and that was the cost for the company that organized the auction. “It takes some time, but for us, accuracy was more important than speed,” says Paulsen. He says that “updates will follow soon” about the projects where the money goes.
2023-05-12 09:59:58
#Qatar #World #Cup #madness #migrants #cares #anymore
