The number of publications about abuses in Qatar is increasing rapidly. The Guardian is at the forefront of the battle, and will come up with a piece on Friday about exploited parking attendants in the Al Bidda Park in Doha. The guards, working for Al Nasr Security Services, claim to earn just 40 cents an hour for their overtime, and only get one day off per month.
The Al Bidda Park will serve as a hotspot for the FIFA Fan Festival in the upcoming World Cup, where up to 40,000 supporters can come and celebrate. To put it in perspective: a beer there costs about 13.80 euros, while the parking attendants earn only forty cents for their overtime, according to calculations by The Guardian. The guards say they work 12-hour shifts and only get one day off per month. In total, they amount to 348 hours per month, of which 104 are overtime hours. For the remaining 244 hours, the guards receive an average of 1.23 euros.
Both the amount of overtime and the compensation for it are in direct contradiction to Qatari law. The security guards know they are being exploited, but feel powerless. “It’s illegal, but the government is silent. So what can we do?” says one. Others argue that they tolerate it because they need money, or are happy to have anything at all.
The guards’ accommodations are also neglected, writes The Guardian. The newspaper visited one of the camps and saw cramped spaces crammed with bunk beds, filthy kitchens and smelly toilet cubicles. One of the security guards claimed he preferred to wait until he could go to the toilet in the park, purely because the cubicles in his camp were so bad.
The Guardian is the same newspaper that announced in 2021 that at least 6,500 migrant workers from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan had already died during the construction of Qatari World Cup stadiums. For the time being, FIFA maintains that only three workers lost their lives.