Subject: Alwatany Travels, Bin Twar Center Office No. 24, Doha, Qatar

Date: 28 January 2021

This is to give you the report about the company Nasser Bin Abdullah & Sons – Alwatany Travels.

It’s now running 12 months that our salary is delayed and it seems that the company doesn’t care about the situation of its employees (Indians and Filipinos). Every end of the month is our struggle for where we can get money to pay for us to pay our house rent and how we can survive. We are always approaching our manager to ask about the salary but what he always does is just raise his voice and tell that the company doesn’t have money to pay the salaries.  Out of these pending months, we were only given QAR 1500 three times and we were advised by the manager to send him an email and he will try to approve it. Imagine, we are paying QAR 1,250 for the house rent per month which means we only have QAR250 budget for food and other expenses. We just managed to survive the rest of the months borrowing money from our friends who can understand us. 

Some of our IT and HR employees from our head office already filed a case in the Labour ministry but nothing happened. They even have longer pending salaries and are still waiting until now. Some of them just decided to go back to their home country without getting any single riyal. In our case, we are also afraid to go to the Labour Ministry because once the sponsor knows that it is us who filed the complaint; he will never sign our resignation paper nor approve any salary and gratuity payment. 

We already sent an email to MADLSA to at least make a surprise visit at our office to check our condition and what they replied is:

 “To submit a labour complaint please send a text message to (92727), then 5 and the personal number or the visa number to decide on the complaint”. 

If I will reply the details they need, the sponsor will be notified and they will know who complained so I will be in big trouble and the same case will happen to us like those employees from our head office. Now, we are stuck being forced to work without the assurance of any salary. 

My colleague tried giving his resignation paper to our manager but he just kept it in his drawer and did not sign it. He just ordered our finance officer not to process any salary request of any amount which is really unfair. In this case, we don’t know how we can manage our life here. If we complain to authority, the manager or sponsor might cancel our visa right away without paying us. 

Even the WPS rule is not being followed in Qatar; it is just a plain media release. I even attached the company computer card for them to monitor the salary transfer of employees but no one bothered checking it. I think the reason why they don’t care is that they saw that the sponsors of the company are members of the ruling family. If they are really true with their advocacy, this company could have been penalized since before and no one is above the law. I don't know who to call and also don't know who to trust this time, that is why I am taking my chances if you can do something for us.

I hope that by this report, being a trusted migrant-organization with your advocacy, you can help us be referred to the right people who can help us get our basic right as employees. 

– JS, employee

Follow up:

• In response to follow-up queries from MR, the complainant shared communication between employees and employer, and evidence of several complaints filed to the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs.
• These include a request to check the wage protection system payment records (22 July 2020, 26 January 2021), and a request for labour inspection (26 January 2021).
• MR has written to both the sponsor, whose name appears on the company card, and to the company itself. No response has been received.