April 11, 2003 KERALAMONITOR.COM

Report from the Indian Embassy Doha Labour Welfare Department

55 workers living without food and salary in Doha

DOHA - M/s Candle Trading & Contracting Co., Post Box. No. 379, Doha, is a manpower supply company and does not have any project of its own. It has a long history of workers’ unrest and there have been cases where workers sit idle for 5 to 6 months without salary before their account is settled and they are repatriated to India. Our earlier efforts to approach the sponsor to solve workers problems have been fruitless. The sponsor always puts the blame squarely on the workers. Because of continuous ill-treatment of Indian workers in the company, Ministry of Labour, New Delhi has black-listed the company with the recommendation of this Embassy. But the company has successfully circumvented the ban by recruiting workers from India in the name of another company M/s Al Jabal Co., which is under the same management.

At present also there are approximately 55 workers sitting idle in the camp without salary and food money for their repatriation to India. ICBF is supplying food to them for last 8 months. They have approached Labour Deptt. and the Deptt. has given a schedule to the company to send the workers back. The company has resisted our efforts in the past to meet the workers in their camp. Currently the Indian workers in the company have 11 months of salary backlog. Very few have valid visas.

Some workers of the company had approached the Civil Court in April 2002 to realize their salary arrears and in January 2003 the court had passed a verdict in their favour. In spite of the verdict the company did not pay salary arrears to the workers as a result of which they had to approach the higher court to implement the verdict. The Higher Court verdict upheld the workers’ claim against Al Jabal Co, and verdict against Candle Trading is still awaited. The entire process took more than 9 months after which Candle Trading Co. did not pay them their arrears. Only recently Candle Trading has settled part of salary arrears in cash in respect of 15 workers and gave them post-dated cheques for the rest of their arrears to be realized in India, which is illegal as per Qatar Labour Law. Other workers are reluctant to approach the Civil Court because of the inordinate delay in getting the verdict after which even the company does not pay.

In the past the Embassy has repeatedly approached the appropriate authorities with a request for action against the company. Ambassador has also taken up the matter personally with Minister of Interior in December 2002 and Minister for Civil Service and Housing in January 2003 during his meetings with them.

Electricity and water supply to the camp have been discontinued on more than one occasion in the past. We have refused to endorse company’s demand for Indian workers in the past because of continuous ill-treatment. The 55 workers who are now with Candle Trading Company have come to Qatar without attestation of Contracts by the Embassy. The workers have on occasions demonstrated outside the sponsor’s office/residence – but they were still not able to get their dues. It is understood that even while agitating against Candle Trading Co., the workers have been able to obtain employment elsewhere. This has been brought to our notice by the Department of Labour, Government of the State of Qatar. -KM. Courtesy, Indian Embassy Doha. Click