Guests in the machine - Qatar sets up stricter labour policies

Qatar’s Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs recently released figures which suggested that worker remittances totalled a record USD 12 billion in 2014, according to bq magazine.

No breakup was given by the Ministry but foreign exchange market sources told BQ magazine money transfers made by Nepali workers may have been between USD 1 and 2 billion out a total of USD 12 billion last year.

According to Nepal embassy sources, there are an estimated 400,000 Nepalis working in Qatar and an equal number may be based in Malaysia – the two countries with the largest number of Nepali migrant workers.

Their numbers have lately been increasing in South Korea as well.

A Nepali minister recently told international media in Kathmandu that overseas Nepalis remitted nearly USD 4 billion home annually which was roughly a fifth of Nepal’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Reacting to an international rights’ group report that suggested migrant workers needed to be treated better in Qatar, the labour ministry said that migrant workers earned much less in their home countries than here.

A little earlier, local media cited a Chicago University study which suggested that GCC countries, Qatar in particular, contributed greatly to bridging the economic inequality gaps in poorer societies of South Asia and helped raise living standards as millions of their people worked in the oil-rich countries and remitted tens of billions of dollars home annually.

Analysts say that while it is true that some companies in Qatar may not be treating their workers well, this cannot be generalised for the entire private sector or the country.

It can’t be true that all migrant workers are mistreated in Qatar, said one analyst asking not to be identified.

Qatar has recently been bearing the brunt of international criticism over the treatment of migrant workers, especially Nepali workers engaged in the FIFA 2022-related development projects.

But some analysts say the criticisms smack of bias because no rights’ group or trade union has so far highlighted the issue of migrant workers and their families’ economic conditions getting better due to the remittances they send home.

Data released by the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics show that in the past seven years, from 2008 until 2014, foreign workers transferred from Qatar a little over a staggering USD 60 billion home.

It would be safe to argue that much of this money must have gone to families in poorer societies struggling with cash.

Exact data are difficult to have but assuming that even if a tenth of this sum, which would work out to over USD 6 billion, went to Nepal, that would be a huge sum for the small country whose GDP in 2013 was estimated at close to USD 20 billion, the analyst argued.

For more on this story: bq magazine