18 months of non-payment, Qatari company leaves workers in the lurch
Summary
Date Reported: 14 Oct 2020
Location: Qatar
Companies
Imperial Trading & Contracting (ITCC) - Unknown , Specialised Aluminium & Steel Co. (SASCO) - UnknownAffected
Total individuals affected: 550
Migrant & immigrant workers: ( Number unknown - Bangladesh , Construction , Gender not reported ) , Migrant & immigrant workers: ( Number unknown - Egypt , Construction , Gender not reported ) , Migrant & immigrant workers: ( Number unknown - Nepal , Construction , Gender not reported ) , Migrant & immigrant workers: ( Number unknown - India , Construction , Gender not reported )Issues
Intimidation , Right to Food , Restricted mobility , Freedom of Expression , Wage Theft , Freedom of MovementResponse
Response sought: Yes, by Resource Centre
Story containing response: (Find out more)
Action taken: Workers state that they have "exhausted every avenue available to file complaints" but without action being taken. Protests have been held more than once and in June 2019 police allegedly advised workers not to return to work until they were paid; workers then received six months of pay over the following two months. Among the recent protestors, one worker stated that the police had come "in 40 vehicles and threatened [workers] with arrest for protesting". Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited ITCC and its parent group SASCO to respond to the allegations; neither company responded.
Source type: NGO
About 550 employees of a once successful Qatari company – Imperial Trading and Contracting Company (ITCC) – have been protesting non-payment of wages for over 11 months, which has pushed them and their families back home to destitution...
ITCC worked on several high profile projects...
Migrant-Rights.org spoke to several affected employees, all of whom say they have exhausted every avenue available to file complaints, none of which yielded any results. This is not the first time that such protests were held.... In June 2019, a few hundred workers protested outside of ITCC’s offices because they had not been paid for six months...
Salary payments stopped again from November 2019...
The company has made it clear employees can go back to work and their payments would be made in instalments, or they can give up their claims and seek a job elsewhere or return home. Most of their Qatar IDs (QID) have expired, and in order to change jobs, they will still need the company to reactivate it