Officials say all seven will be up by 2016 but the largest, Labour city, will house workers on 2022 World Cup projects in next few weeks

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Qatar will build seven “cities” to house 258,000 migrant labourers who are building major infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup, officials said on Tuesday.



Ministers said all seven should be built by the end of 2016 and that the largest, Labour city – for 70,000 people and with a 24,000-seat cricket stadium – will house workers in the next few weeks.

The decision to build more modern facilities comes after continued criticism of the accommodation provided by Qatar for vast numbers of migrant workers and after Doha admitted substandard and illegal living conditions were still being used.

In total, 258,000 workers – about 25% of Qatar’s migrant labourer population – will be housed, officials said.

Dr Abdullah bin Saleh al-Khulaifi, the labour and social affairs minister, said the new accommodation centres were the “future”.

“That’s the blueprint,” he said of Labour city. “There are in the pipeline [several] cities around the nation. I know our people want to have better accommodation for their labourers.”

Khulaifi said Qatar has effectively doubled its number of housing inspectors to 300, and that should increase to 400 soon.

“We have labour accommodation standards and we are monitoring them and penalising those who are violating [the rules],” he said. “Our business community knows we are taking it very seriously.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Qatar’s labour and social affairs minister, Abdullah bin Saleh al-Khulaifi, speaks to journalists in Doha on Monday. Photograph: Maya Alleruzzo/AP

The cities, a mixture of government and private sector accommodation, will be built across Qatar, from the fringes of the capital Doha to one in the north.

Most will house about 28,000 workers.

Khulaifi said there was no final figure for how much the projects will cost.

However, Labor city, with 55 buildings including a mall, clinic and the second largest mosque in Qatar, cost $825m (740m euros).

Most workers who will end up living there will be transferred from other accommodation centres in Qatar, but officials have said the number of migrant workers in the country will more than double to two and a half million two years before the World Cup.

The scale of the housing problem is apparent just a 45-minute drive from where Khulaifi was speaking.



On a government-organised trip to existing compounds this week, workers in Doha’s dusty old industrial area were seen living in desperate conditions.

In one run-down camp, living in a cramped room housing eight people, where clothes were hanged to the walls and valued possessions were stuffed under tiny bunk beds, was Hassan, a new arrival from Ghana.

Along the vast, squalid corridor of tiny bedrooms was a filthy kitchen.

Hassan, 34, a driver at home in Accra, said he had been duped into coming to Qatar to work.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Labourers at the al-Wakra stadium in Doha on Monday. Photograph: Maya Alleruzzo/AP

“Our agent deceived us. He said we are being paid in US dollars but we came here and we are receiving the payment in riyals,” he said.

Hassan, who has a wife and two boys in Ghana, said he thought he would get $900 a month as a labourer but instead receives the equivalent of about $250.

A Human Rights Watch researcher, Nicholas McGeehan, called the plan to build new accommodation a “useful step”: “We don’t want anyone housed in degrading conditions that we still see far too often in the industrial zone.

However, “Housing has never been identified as the major problem in Qatar. It’s the system that’s the problem.

“The problems are the mechanisms of control which place an inordinate amount of power in the hands of employers.”