Qatar vows compliance on labour reforms

QATAR said that it expects “100 percent compliance” from businesses by the end of 2016 on a labour reform introduced to ensure the country’s vast migrant workforce receive salaries on time.

Gover nment f ig ures relea sed i n Doha yesterday to mark the one-year anniversar y of the introduction of the Wage Protection System (WPS) show that 1.8 million – around 85 percent – of Qatar’s 2.1 million workforce are now paid electronica lly. That works out at around 37,000 companies.

But a senior Labour Ministry official said all companies will sign up to the scheme by the end of December.

“Our aim is to have 100 percent compliance by the end of the year,” said Mohammed Ali Al-Meer, the director of Qatar’s labour inspection department.

“We have a commitment from the [remaining] 15 percent, we have contacted them.”

The WPS was introduced on November 2 last year by the 2022 football World Cup host in an attempt to improve labour conditions following widespread international criticism of Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers.

Failure to pay salaries on time, especially for low-waged blue collar workers, was one of the biggest complaints voiced by rights groups against companies in the energy-rich Gulf state.

A 2013 academic study, Portrait of Low-Income Migrants in Contemporary Qatar, found that around a fifth of migrant workers were “sometimes, rarely or never” paid on time.

Bosses of companies who do not pay staff on time face fines of up to 6,000 Qatari riyals ($1,650) for every worker who did not receive their salary, and up to one month in jail.

Labour officials said 385 violations had been recorded by companies still not paying workers on time in the past 12 months, though it was unclear whether any bosses had been imprisoned.

Along with the figures, a statement from labour minister Issa bin Saad AlJafali Al-Nuaimi yesterday said WPS had ensured “greater protections for workers”.