“DELIBERATE GHETTO-ISATION”
Around 85 per cent of Qatar’s three million population are foreign workers. Many of those evicted work as drivers, day labourers or have contracts with companies but are responsible for their own accommodation – unlike those working for major construction firms who live in camps housing tens of thousands of people.
One worker said the evictions targeted single men, while foreign workers with families were unaffected.
A Reuters reporter saw more than a dozen buildings where residents said people had been evicted. Some buildings had their electricity switched off.
Most were in neighbourhoods where the government has rented buildings for World Cup fan accommodation. The organisers’ website lists buildings in Al Mansoura and other districts where flats are advertised for between US$240 and US$426 per night.
The Qatari official said municipal authorities have been enforcing a 2010 Qatari law which prohibits “workers’ camps within family residential areas” – a designation encompassing most of central Doha – and gives them the power to move people out.
Some of the evicted workers said they hoped to find places to live amid purpose-built workers’ accommodation in and around the industrial zone on Doha’s southwestern outskirts or in outlying cities, a long commute from their jobs.
The evictions “keep Qatar’s glitzy and wealthy facade in place without publicly acknowledging the cheap labour that makes it possible,” said Vani Saraswathi, Director of Projects at Migrant-Rights.org, which campaigns for foreign workers in the Middle East.
“This is deliberate ghetto-isation at the best of times. But evictions with barely any notice are inhumane beyond comprehension.”
Some workers said they had experienced serial evictions.
One said he was forced to change buildings in Al Mansoura at the end of September, only to be moved on 11 days later with no prior notice, along with some 400 others. “In one minute, we had to move,” he said.
Mohammed, a driver from Bangladesh, said he had lived in the same neighbourhood for 14 years until Wednesday, when the municipality told him he had 48 hours to leave the villa he shared with 38 other people.
He said labourers who built up the infrastructure for Qatar to host the World Cup were being pushed aside as the tournament approaches.
“Who made the stadiums? Who made the roads? Who made everything? Bengalis, Pakistanis. People like us. Now they are making us all go outside.”
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