Doha — Qatari regime has deported low-income migrant laborers who protested for their unpaid salaries, while the country is getting ready for the football World Cup in November.
On August 14, at least 60 poor laborers from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Egypt, and the Philippines, protested in front of the Al Bandary International Group offices in Doha. According to reports, some of them hadn’t received pay in seven months.
Unknown numbers of demonstrators were arrested, and some of them were deported.
Deportees, according to the administration, “breached security laws.”
Since Qatar was given the World Cup in 2010, which sparked a wave of stadium and infrastructure construction around the nation, its treatment of migrant workers has come under scrutiny.
The Al Bandary International Group enterprise specializes mostly on engineering and construction.
The workers’ involvement in World Cup preparations is unknown, and the organizing body refuses to comment.
However, the Qatari regime confirmed in a statement to the BBC that a handful of employees who took part in the protest in Doha had been imprisoned for violating public security rules.
It is known that some of those “who failed to remain peaceful” will be deported, and the rights groups claim that some have already left the country.
After the protests, the Qatari regime has promised that, the impacted laborers would receive all back-paid wages and benefits.
A representative of the government’s World Cup planning committee declined to offer any comments regarding the Al Bandary protest. An inquiry for comment was not answered by the Al Bandary group.
The Qatari regime said that a wage protection system, which requires companies to deposit all payments through Qatari banks within seven days before their due date, covers 96% of Qatar’s eligible workers and that any flaws in the system are being investigated.
