By day, they build the streets of one of the richest countries in the world. By night, many of them seek reprieve from what the Building and Wood Workers' International, a federation of labour unions, calls "crowded, squalid camps". Cramped rooms, rows of bunk beds, and poor washroom facilities: Along the back streets of Al Khor, Qatar's second-largest city, thousands of migrant workers - mostly from South Asia - live in conditions far removed from the glamorous high-rises they've helped create. Most workers come to the Gulf to escape a life of poverty but some say they are now disappointed and frustrated by their living and working conditions. "[The situation in] India is not so good, but we were told this [place] would be better," Lakhsman Rao, a "helper" at a construction firm, told Al Jazeera. "We left our families to come here," he said from a room shared with nine other men in a labour camp set up on the outskirts of Al Khor. His name has been changed to protect his identity. Fact-finding trip Allegations of rights abuses have long been raised against companies based in Qatar. But after being awarded the FIFA World Cup in 2022, the country has faced increased scrutiny over dubious labour conditions. This week a delegation of the Building and Wood Workers' International (BWI), a federation of trade unions based in Geneva, travelled to Qatar on a fact-finding trip to investigate working conditions in the small Gulf country. [The situation in] India is not so good, but we were told this [place] would be better. - Lakhsman Rao, construction company employee The mission "found disturbing evidence of wrong practices and gathered testimonies about the violations of internationally accepted labour standards", said Ambet Yuson, the general secretary of BWI, on Thursday. "One worker in a slave-like situation is one too many. This is not acceptable," he told a press conference in Doha, Qatar's capital. Recent reports of forced labour and workplace deaths have coaxed the country's migrant worker system into the spotlight. Forty-four Nepali workers died in Qatar this summer, many from heart attacks, while thousands of other migrant workers in the country suffer from unpaid salaries, bad living conditions, and exploitative labour recruitment agencies, according to an article in the Guardian. Qatari officials dispute the Guardian's claims. Hussain Al Mulla, the undersecretary of Qatar's Ministry of Labour, said the government "has retained a legal firm to examine the complaint raised in the foreign newspaper report on the number of injuries and deaths. However, we initiated our own investigations and established that the number mentioned is excessive and exaggerated. The death cases were of natural causes, not of work-related issues." On Tuesday, Qatar's National Human Rights Committee - a branch of the government that helped to facilitate BWI's trip - took the delegation to a labour camp in Ras Laffan where conditions, they said, appeared to be good. 'Difference between earth and sky' But afterwards, Al Jazeera and some members of the delegation visited a labour camp in Al Khor, where conditions were spartan. Thin string tied between beds acted as clotheslines, while cardboard boxes glued on the walls were used as toothbrush holders. One toilet was allocated per ten men, workers said, but some of the wash areas were broken, without taps and plumbing. These conditions violate compulsory standards set forth by Qatar's National Human Rights Committee, which prohibit bunk beds and stipulate that only up to four workers may share a single room. But rights groups have said a culture of impunity prevails, with oversight and enforcement lax. Paid roughly 1,200 Qatari riyals ($330) a month, the men's work includes tiling and plastering at Lusail City, where many construction projects are underway, including a stadium for the World Cup. They said they were in Qatar on temporary visas valid for just three months, making them ineligible to obtain state-issued ID or government health insurance. Lakhsman Rao, originally from Andhra Pradesh in India, said he had to pay 70,000 rupees ($1,500) to a recruitment agent in India in order to get a job in Doha. He was promised a salary of 1,000 riyals ($273) back in India, but upon arriving learned he would only be paid 800 riyals ($219). Yet just across the road in another camp, conditions seemed to mostly abide by Qatar's labour laws. A mobile crane operator living at the quarters described the divergence between his conditions and those at the camp across the road as "the difference between earth and sky".

• published: 10 Oct 2013
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