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Embassies and the Labour Department have been receiving scores of complaints from employees about their companies’ reluctance or even refusal to pay the end of service benefits and gratuity, according to sources.
Some of the employees are also seeking the intervention of the National Human Rights Committee (NHRC), they said.
Even though such complaints are not new, what is worrying is that the number of such cases is on the rise now, the sources said.
The labour department, on the recommendations of some of the diplomatic missions, has always come to the rescue of the workers, inquiries found.
“In spite of this new complaints are cropping up these days,” said a diplomat.
“If an authority is in place to monitor such issues no employer would dare violate the rules,” said legal activist Nizar Kochery.
He said it is necessary to establish a government body to look into such complaints especially as Qatar is hiring more workers on account of a surge in construction.
Kochery said such a body must consist of representatives of different nationalities besides the labour department officials.
“It could be something like the authority in place in the United Arab Emirates which ensures that salaries are paid to workers on time,” he said. After the body was set up complaints of non-payment of salaries have come down there, the sources said.
According to some of the diplomatic missions even senior employees of private companies complain of non-payment of salaries and benefits.
The embassies usually forward such complaints to the Labour Departments and in most cases the employees are benefited.
If employers have the facility to deposit their yearly contribution to such an authority, it would help the workers, he said.
The legal activist said there is a mandatory and well-defined provision for the end of service benefits to employees and the denial of this is in violation of the Qatar Labour Law.
“Even if any employer claims to have made ‘other’ payments to the workers at any point of time this cannot be used as an excuse for denying the end of service benefits,” Kochery said.
