Cleaning staff get doormat treatment

LOW-PAID AND OVERWORKED, THEY ARE HOUSED IN INHUMAN CONDITIONS

THOUSANDS of expatriate workers who are paid a pittance and many of them housed in inhuman conditions toil day and night to keep Qatar’s offices and business centres spick-and-span, inquiries by Gulf Times have revealed.

The lowest paid amongst the labour classes, most of these men and women work shifts extending from 12 to 16 hours. They get paid an overtime allowance of QR1.35 for the “mandatory” extra hours they put in.

Visible yet inconspicuous – that is how a salesgirl at a leading supermarket described them, and rightly too. “People tend to walk past by them, without paying much attention,” she said.

Most of these workers who come from Nepal and Sri Lanka are paid a monthly salary ranging from QR400-600.

In one of the accommodations in the Mansoura area that this correspondent visited, up to 10 workers were found to be housed in a single room of 7ft x 12ft. The dilapidated building had water seeping from the toilets on the upper floor and a ceiling ready to cave in at any time.

The more than 100 or so employees of this company preferred to share rooms on the basis of their nationalities.

A sick Sri Lankan worker, who had been in Doha for 14 months said: “One of our seven roommates contracted a disease a few days ago and we all seem to have been hit by it.”

The workers said they did not have access to medical benefits or assistance in case they fell sick or suffered a work-related injury. The health card for a government clinic costs only QR100 annually, though.

Another room of the same dimensions was found to be shared by 11 Nepalese, with five sets of bunk beds serving as their living, dining and bedrooms. Only two out of the 10 “cots” in that room had mattresses while the rest had only the hard boards.

A Nepalese worker of the group, who has been in Doha for the past two years, said he paid 80,000 Nepalese rupees (QR4,000) to an agent back home to secure the job in Qatar.

Having just recouped the payment to the agent, he said he hoped to send money to the seven dependents in his family who rely on his remittance. He gets paid a monthly salary of QR500.

The same man said if any worker wanted to visit his home country before the stipulated two years, he would have to buy his own ticket.

Workers with another major cleaning company complained of “forced overtime” while explaining how they are made to work 16 hours a day. Earning a meagre salary of QR400, the 24-year old Sri Lankan said: “I work 16 hours a day because if I don’t volunteer for it my supervisor will make life even more difficult for me. The pressure is always subtle as he can take away what little amenities I have at the camp.” The overtime paid to him is QR1.35 an hour.

His colleague, a Nepalese who basic salary is QR300 agreed while saying: “We wake up at 4.30 in the morning because our camp is outside Doha and finish our work at 8pm. By the time we get back to the camp, we are physically drained; but still we cannot go to sleep as we have to cook our night meal.”

He also said there are 18 people in his room and after coming back at 8pm everyone gets busy with running their daily errands.

When the plight of the workers was brought to the notice of the manager of a leading company specialising in cleaning and peripheral services, he told Gulf Times that his employees were well looked after and no one had ever complained of any problem. “In fact we have some employees who have been with us for 12 years and if they have not been happy, they would have gone back,” he said.

He also pointed out that back in 1998-1999 the salary for cleaners used to be QR300-400, which has now gone up to QR500-600, while the accommodation provided by the company has also “improved” significantly.

Based on the appalling conditions facing some 10mn Asian labourers in the Gulf, Doha-based Al Jazeera English channel has started telecasting a series named ‘Blood, sweat and tears. The agony of labourers in the Gulf’. The programme can be viewed today at 8.30am, tomorrow at 6am and 7.30pm and on August 25 at 9.30am.