The problems of the Egyptians workers in Qatar
Egypt-Qatar, Politics, 2/4/1998

Top officials in Egypt and Qatar keep declaring that there are no differences between the two countries, especially after the recent problem that has to do with Qatar's termination of contracts held by some Egyptian workers in Qatar.

The Qatari authorities refuted the news that there is a plan to terminate the contracts of Egyptian workers in particular. They said Qatar is only trying to increase the number of the Qatari workers by substituting Qatari workers for some expatriate workers within the plan of the Gulf Cooperation Council in this concern.

The chair of the Egyptian Workers Federation, Al Sayed Rashed, submitted a complaint to the head of the International Labor Organization (ILO), Michele Hans and to Egyptian Minister of Manpower and Immigration Ahmed Al Amawy, as he is the board director of the ILO in Geneva, over the problems faced by Egyptian workers in Qatar.

The complaint said that Qatar violated international labor law no 111 for the year 1958 which had been signed by Qatar and Egypt. Those laws stipulate that local authorities should not discriminate between workers by preselection. The Egyptian authorities also said Qatar violated a number of agreements that deal with the rights of expatriate workers.

Some of the Egyptian workers' contracts that were prematurely terminated by Qatar would have ended in 1999. The Qatari authorities also replaced the Egyptian workers with other expatriate workers, not with Qatari workers.

Meanwhile, Qatar terminated 270 contracts of Egyptian workers who work in the Qatari Ministry of Interior. The Egyptian Ambassador in Doha, Mohamed Mansy, said that the total number of the Egyptian workers whose contracts had been terminated recently is about 500.

We have reported the ups and downs of the relations between Egypt and Qatar, and most recently about what sounded like positive statements from Qatar. However, with this confirmed action against Egyptian workers,
Informed sources explained that the reason for the discrepancy between the positive official government statements and what they are actually doing is that they don't want to make the Saudis look ineffective in their brokered reconciliation of Egypt and Qatar, that they undertook last November.

Previous Stories:
  Egypt FM: Sacking Egyptian workers in Qatar is a bad message   (1/28/1998)
  Qatar kicks more Egyptians out   (1/27/1998)
  Egyptian - Qatari problems   (12/24/1997)

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