The UK-based engineering development NGO said that electronic payment would provide workers with the evidence needed to prove that they have not been paid and allow them to seek redress.
Research team leader Jill Wells said: “Non-payment and late payment of wages is one of the biggest concerns to migrant workers. It is also a potential source of disruption and delay to projects and therefore a major risk to Government clients and their project management consultants.”
The report was launched yesterday at a roundtable meeting in Doha with key industry stakeholders. It outlines preliminary findings and recommendations based on interviews with a number of contractors and project management consultants operating in Qatar.
The interviewees were responding to the proposed Mandatory Standards for migrant workers from leading client the Qatar Foundation (QF). The standards, which are likely to be rolled out across Qatar, place more responsibility for compliance with contractors.
The firms interviewed for the research welcomed the new standards and agreed that main contractors could do more to ensure workers are paid properly, potentially by paying workers directly when subcontractors fail to do so as well as adopting electronic payments.
Taking steps to improve the flow of cash down the subcontracting chain is also vital. The round table meeting was chaired by Stephen Lines, regional president of the Chartered Institute Of Building (CIOB), who proposed that a percentage of the advance payment that clients make to contractors might be placed in a bond for the protection of workers’ wages.
Participants welcomed this suggestion and hoped that it would be taken up by government clients. The report also recommends that:
- All public sector clients should follow the approach adopted by the QF in setting up a workers’ welfare department to undertake regular welfare audits of contractors and subcontractors and aim to work only with contractors who comply with the standards.
- Principal contractors should be required to set up a ‘hotline’ for workers to alert all stakeholders to delayed payment of wages by subcontractors.
- The Labour Department should be strengthened so that the Government can play a bigger role in enforcing its own laws and regulations and clamping down on companies that flout the law and abuse the workers.
- The government of Qatar should leverage its position with labour sending countries whose economies are heavily dependent on remittances from migrant workers, and pressure these governments to step up efforts to address corruption and exploitation in the recruitment business.
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