Peter is a lonely figure on the night of Doha. The Ghanaian valet stands as a pole at a crossroads in Msheireb, at the foot of the office towers of this new sector, built on the site of an Indian district that has fallen into disrepair. Customers becoming rare, the forty-something, strapped in an ocher-colored livery, agrees to open up about his life in Qatar.
“ My salary is not very high, 1,250 riyals per month [300 euros], without accommodation and food, which are paid for by my employer. But it’s better than in Ghana, that’s why we come here. And then the situation improves. Five years ago, if we asked to change jobs, we were sent back to our country. But a few months ago, thanks to government reforms, I was able to change companies without difficulty. All this progress is thanks to the World Cup and the pressure that the media and human rights NGOs have put on Qatar. “
Across town, in the business district of West Bay, Max Tuñon, the director of the local branch of the International Labor Organization (ILO), which opened in 2017, gives a speech roughly similar: “There are still many challenges, but when it comes to protecting migrant workers, Qatar has made remarkable strides. “
Progress has been particularly slow to come. While the Doha authorities had promised to abolish the kafala in 2015, it was not until 2020, ten years after the vote of the International Football Federation (FIFA) awarding the emirate the 2022 World Cup, that this system chaining migrants to their employer, confining to slavery modern, has been struck out of the legislation.
The law now authorizes the two million nationals of Southeast Asia and Africa, at the origin of the overwhelming modernization of this Gulf micromonarchy, to leave the country and change jobs without first requesting permission from their boss.
“Weak implementation”
Qatar also imposed a mandatory minimum wage in 2020, set at 1,000 riyals, to which must be added 300 riyals for food and 500 for accommodation, if not provided by the employer. “When I arrived in Doha for the first time, sixteen years ago, I was paid 500 riyals per month”, says Chandra, a 35-year-old Nepalese who works as a driver in a detergent company. “Today, I earn 3,000”, adds this migrant who came to shop at the Labor City shopping center.
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