A report for the
Qatar Foundation said: “The costs borne by workers … are essentially ‘bribes’ demanded (extorted) by recruitment agents to secure the jobs in Qatar for which they enter into debt with high-interest rates.”
Bangladeshi workers, like Aman Ullah, pay by far the highest fees. In 2016, Ullah was charged 360,000 taka ($4,190) for a job in Qatar. He was promised work as a welder on a monthly wage of 2,500 Qatari rial ($686), but on arrival, he was taken out to the desert to work on a farm for 800 rial.
“There was no limit to the work,” he said. “We had no electricity or air-conditioning and were not allowed to leave the compound.” His employer would not let him return home until he begged for permission to visit his sick mother. Back in Bangladesh, with nothing to show for his time in Qatar, his debt had ballooned to 800,000 taka forcing him to take out further loans to pay off the original debt.
Even in death, workers are not released from their recruitment debt. Hoping to earn money for his daughter’s dowry, Mahamad Nadaf Mansur Dhuniya, from Nepal, paid an agent 150,000 NPR for a construction job in Qatar in 2018. He could only afford the fee by taking out a loan with an annual interest rate of 48%. Last year, he was found hanging in his workplace.
His wife, Mairul Khatun, is unsure why he killed himself. “I think it may have been the pressure of the loan, his daughter’s marriage, the need to look after his family,” she said, from her home in southern Nepal.
Her hands and feet are smeared in mud from labouring in the nearby fields, for which she earns 300 NPR a day and a few potatoes, which lie on the ground beside her.
She may have lost her husband, but his debt remains. “I have a lot of tension now. Before, we sometimes ate meat and milk but we’ve stopped now. How can we afford these things?” Khatun said. “I can’t sleep at night.”