When shop-owner Nazir Masih left Pakistan in the late 1970s to try his luck in the oil-rich city of Abu Dhabi, he did not imagine a future of detention and deportation.
Category: Qatar
On March 22, the International Labor Organization (ILO) moved to give Qatar until November to reform its laws governing migrant labor. This builds on an ongoing investigation following a complaint lodged with the ILO in 2016 that workers are drawn into “forced labor.” The ILO will determine if Qatar’s labor laws contravene the forced labor […]
Migrants workers are not slaves. They are human beings too, and have rights to survive with dignity like others in the world”, Dulal of Bangladesh said to me, while returning from Qatar recently. In Doha, Qatar to report on the plights of migrant workers, I met and talked to some of the ill-fated migrant workers […]
In the Al Quoz industrial area of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a number of medium and large-sized buses can be spotted transporting workers clad in company uniforms to distant worksites early in the morning. In the evening or, in certain cases, late at night, these workers are brought back to labour camps […]
Mizanur Rahman, a mason at a construction firm in Saudi Arabia, is worried about losing his job. His employer has recently expressed inability to continue some of the ongoing projects due to financial crisis. The lone breadwinner of a five-member family from Faridpur cannot even begin to imagine what would happen to his family if […]
More than 4 lakh people hailing from Telangana work in Gulf countries. They are often unaware of the politics, economy, cultural system or even the climate of their destination. As the plane crosses the terrain of Muscat towards Doha, Jyoti and Kumari look in wonder at the 3D display in front of them running images […]
Under sustained international criticism Qatar has reformed its controversial laws governing migrant workers. But for significant improvement in labour conditions there have to be changes in the way the Nepal government and recruiters treat their own workers. After Qatar’s king approved an amendment to the law last week, more than 400,000 Nepali migrant workers, mostly hired for construction of […]
Pushpa is an anomaly, but also a part of an increasing phenomenon, in which urban youths have one eye fixed on the Gulf countries and the other further west, on Europe and North America. After a month-long vacation, Pushpa Bajracharya flew back to Dubai on Thursday, to resume his work as a merchandiser at a […]
Amid complaints that the existing human resource was way less to handle problems of the ever increasing number of Nepali migrant workers, the government has made a significant increase in the number of diplomatic staff in the Nepali embassies in various labor destination countries. The government has increased the number of embassy personnel in the […]
For the promotion of safe and secure employment abroad, the Punjab government in Pakistan is working on a rare idea of setting up its own ‘camps’ in countries of destination for migrant labourers from the province. Under the plan, the provincial government will set up residential quarters or camps in host countries exclusively for the […]