Modern Day Slavery In Qatar: Workers Paid Less Than 60p An Hour – The VOAG Investigates

The VOAG has been aware of the issue of foreign workers in Qatar for some time. RT, Press TV, and Aljazeera, as well as Amnesty International have made documentaries on the issue, and the VOAG has received a variety of articles on the subject. foreign workers mainly from India, Pakistan and other developing countries are encouraged to go to Qatar to work in the construction industry. Once there they are stripped of their passports and forced to work for very little money, and in some cases, for free.

UCATT, the British construction union recently went to Qatar on a “fact-finding mission” to investigate for them selves, and spoke to the VOAG of their results. UCATT now plan to put further pressure on the Hukoomi – Qatar Government Portal and British based companies working in the country. The plight of workers will become increasingly high-profile, as construction is now beginning for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.UCATT met workers who were being paid less than £0.60 pence an hour and who were being paid a little over £50 a week, while being expected to work excessive hours, 6 days a week in temperatures up to 55 degrees in the summer. The levels of poverty pay are especially stark given that Qatar is one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

The 2 million construction workers in Qatar work under the kafala system which means they are bonded labour. The workers have their passports confiscated and cannot leave the country without their employer’s permission. For many workers this means that they cannot return home for at least two years. The workers also have to pay up to a thousand pounds each before they are allowed to work in Qatar, which are often financed through loans at very high interest rates. Often workers do not receive the wages owed to them. During the mission UCATT met workers who had not been paid for five months.

UCATT also visited the accommodation provided for many of the workers and saw how workers live in abject squalor. UCATT met a group of nine workers who were expected to live in one tiny room measuring 10 square metres. Welfare facilities were entirely inadequate with just five poorly maintained toilets provided for 200 workers. The facilities for workers to prepare food were also atrocious. Workers report there is often no running water and they are forced to wash in sea water.

Steve Murphy, General Secretary of UCATT, said: “The treatment of migrant construction workers in Qatar is appalling. If animals were being treated in this way in Britain there would be a national outcry. The fact that this is happening overseas means that many companies are prepared to look the other way in the pursuit of profits.Hundreds of migrant construction workers die in Qatar every year. In the last two years 500 Indian workers have died. Last year 195 Nepalese deaths were recorded 123 of these were recorded as being due to cardiac arrest. UCATT learnt that deceased workers do not receive a post mortem and if the death was recorded as natural causes then no compensation was paid. Mr Murphy added: “The way that migrant workers are treated in Qatar demonstrates that those in power consider their lives to be cheap and expendable.”

The fact finding mission to Qatar was jointly organised with Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI) the international federation of construction unions.

Reporting on the preparations for the 2022 World Cup, an RT (Russia Today news channel) investigation discovered foreign construction workers “toiling in terrible conditions and having received no salaries for months”, and their “passports confiscated by employers”.

One of the men interviewed worked for 12 years as an accommodation specialist, but, as Peter Giesel, the film maker, indicated to RT, “ironically, his accommodation itself doesn’t even have a fan.” The man hasn’t been getting his salary and bonuses for a number of years, and his main difficulty is to fight a case against his boss and his firm: the employer took his passport from him, and the 35-year-old worker hasn’t made the money necessary to return home, “the devilish circle”, as the RT report put it. Another group of guys – there were four of them – weren’t paid for seven months in a row and were trying to file a case when Giesel met them.

As the filmmaker explained, one of the main issues surrounding migrant workers is that they are employed under the so-called kafala system, which is “a law basically stating that every migrant worker that comes into Qatar has to find his own personal sponsor meaning his boss, the firm or corporation he’s working for.”

“And that sponsor has to take care of him legally and medically, but obviously, most of the sponsors take their passports away from the migrant workers. That puts maybe tens of thousands of them in a miserable situation. They can’t make any money to go home, so they’re trapped down there.”

Moreover, migrant employees can’t rely on outside forces such as their countries’ embassies, according to Giesel. “I had a chance to sneak into the Nepalese embassy and do my recordings down there. It seems to be some kind of chaos: the bureaucracy not only in the embassies, but also in the Qatari system is too overwhelming for those 1.4 million migrant workers to be treated fairly,” reported Giesel.

A Summary of the Browne Review – Guildford Against Fees & Cuts

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The Browne Review is a historic attack on education

Workers Power
In the aftermath of the massive demonstration against education cuts and the rise in fees, we reprint an article from Workers Power magazine by John Bowman summarising the proposed cuts.

John Bowman, a member of Workers Power and Revolution Socialist Youth, has been a leading member of the Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, the main organisers of the 10th November student protest.  Workers Power and Revolution Socialist Youth have been in the forefront of the recent student movement. He writes:

“The final nail in the coffin”. That was the judgement of teaching union UCU on the vicious Browne Review into higher education funding. The ‘Independent Review’, chaired by the ex-boss of oil giant BP has set out the most drastic market-driven attack on university education ever seen in Britain.

It proposed:
• The complete abolition of the cap on tuition fees, now to be raised from £3,290 to £9,000
• Using these variable fees to create competition between different universities and courses
• Diverting all sources of funding away from arts, humanities and social sciences towards “priority subjects” preferred by the jobs market and big business such as pharmaceutical and engineering related courses.
• Using the market to bolster the position of a few “priority courses” at elite UK universities on the global education market, at the expense of other courses at other institutions.

Announced only a few days before chancellor George Osborne’s Comprehensive Spending Review made the decision to slash university teaching budgets from £7.1bn to £4.2bn a cut of 40 per cent by 2014, the Browne Review project is to let the market rip through higher education, letting new universities go to the wall.

In the words of the report, “there needs to be a closer fit between what is taught in higher education and the skills needed in the economy…There are clinical and priority courses such as medicine, science and engineering that are important to the well-being of our society and to our economy…In our proposals there will be scope for Government to withdraw public investment through HEFCE from many courses to contribute to wider reductions in public spending” (Browne, 2010, p.23-25)

The proposals if implemented would turn university into nothing more than a recruitment ground for big business – to the detriment of knowledge, culture and the betterment of society as a whole.

Debt as a weapon
The Review is clear and unrepentant on how this is to be achieved. A massive increase of tuition fees, through a system of loans and far higher costs, Browne aims to use debt as a weapon, making students take up courses that will allow them to pay off huge debts they will incur after graduation.

A study by the University of Leicester found that if arts and humanities fees rose to £7,000 per year, then there would be a 116 per cent rise in those deterred from taking up courses, compared to 31 per cent who would be deterred from medicine, a course that is perceived to lead to well paid jobs.

New universities
But the threat is not just to courses, it is to entire universities. Those which successfully gear themselves towards profit driven courses and “deliver improved employability” will be able to charge far higher fees, whereas “those that make false promises will disappear.” (Browne 2010, p.31)

In practice, this puts new universities, looked upon less favourably by employers, at an enormous disadvantage. Their intake of less affluent students are more likely to be discouraged by higher fees. They rely more heavily on state funding as opposed to the property, donations and sponsorship benefiting more established Russell Group institutions.

The University of Greenwich estimates a loss of 80 per cent of it’s teaching grant income.

Million+, an organisation representing new universities say the bulk of their members would have to charge £8,000 per year just to maintain current levels of funding – fees so high that they would be simply unable to compete with Russell Group institutions.

Sally Hunt, General Secretary of the UCU said: “As a result of this creation of a market for student places, we would see departments and universities close and a devastating effect on the curriculum as only so-called priority courses survive. It would become almost impossible to develop courses in new areas of knowledge without directly perceived economic benefit.”
Unemployment as a weapon
What is not mentioned in the Browne Review, is that it relies on the intense pressure on young people to find a decent job, or indeed any work when they finish education – at a time when there is a crisis of youth unemployment.

No wonder university applications are rising, despite the threat of debt in later life, with disappointment for more than 200,000 applicants, or three-in-ten who could not get a place this year. Next year it is likely to be even worse, with universities cutting places to prepare for shrunken budgets, and students wanting to put themselves ahead in a jobs market with even fewer opportunities.

Students will do almost anything to get a higher education in this environment, but the scale of the fees suggested by Browne means many will be simply unable – depriving less affluent students of an education.

Attack on culture
With new universities looking set to close, unable to supplement enormous teaching grant reductions with fees, and with arts and humanities subjects looking set to become viable only for the rich, Browne’s review is a historic attack on the access of working class people to culture that must be fought with every means at our disposal – up to and including joint national strike action by both students and staff.
Guildford Against Fees & Cuts
Workers Power
Revolution Socialist Youth
National Campaign Against Fees & Cuts
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