Kenyan officials recently returned a national who had fallen ill as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia and was reportedly denied access to timely medical care.
As a long-term strategy to protect employees, a lobby of workers in the Horn of Africa is urging other Gulf countries to begin labour reforms similar to those made in Qatar.
With abuse reports on domestic workers in Gulf nations accumulating, on Friday the Horn of Africa Confederation of Trade Unions (HACTU) called for safeguarding reforms to ensure labourers from the region are protected wherever they work in the Gulf.
In a bid to hasten the reform of labour rights, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an association of labour groups in eight countries, wrote to Doha and requested that it shares its reform-related expertise with other Gulf countries.
“We want to replicate the progressive labour reforms in Qatar in other Arab and Gulf countries which have poor laws,” said Kassahun Follo, the General Secretary of Hactu.
In a letter to Qatar’s Minister of Labour, Ali bin Samikh Al Marri, the union requested that he “help facilitate the protection of migrant workers’ rights from the eight Horn of Africa countries, namely Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Djibouti, Eritrea and Uganda through bilateral and multilateral relations with other Gulf countries,” as quoted by reports.
According to the joint call, Qatar has recently made “progressive” changes to its immigration policies, and its neighbours “in the Gulf region and the Arab world at large, which receive hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from Africa and Horn of Africa countries in particular,” should follow suit.
The call was made after the association’s annual general meeting in Hawassa, southern Ethiopia, which was sponsored by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
The conference was organised by the HACTU, an observer accredited to IGAD, against the backdrop of numerous cases of ill-treatment involving Horn of Africa labourers in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Kenyan officials recently returned a national who had fallen ill as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia and was reportedly denied access to timely medical care.
HACTU includes labour unions from all IGAD countries, such as the Confederation of Ethiopia Trade Unions (CETU), Central Organisation of Trade Unions – Kenya (COTU), Federation of Somali Trade Unions (FESTU), South Sudan Workers Trade Union Federation, Sudan Workers Trade Unions Federation, National Organisation of Trade Unions-Uganda, Djiboutian Union of Workers and National Confederation of Eritrean Workers.
On a fact-finding visit with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-Africa) in February, the unions claimed that Qatar was making progress in improving worker welfare.
At the time, representatives of ITUC-Africa told journalists that they were pleased with the developments in the country and particularly changes regarding labour regulations such as the Kafala system.
“ITUC-Africa welcomes the pieces of reform that the Qatari state has undertaken and considers them progressive,” the continental body’s General Secretary Kwasi Adu-Amankwah said before a briefing.
Qatar’s labour reforms
On 20 March 2021, Qatar’s Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs (MADLSA) announced the non-discriminatory minimum wage reform, which applies to all workers of all nationalities, in all sectors, including domestic workers.
In May last year, MADLSA introduced a unified platform for complaints and disputes, allowing all members of society to submit reports of violations by their employers.
In October 2021, Qatar held its first ever legislative elections for the two-thirds of the advisory Shura Council, where 30 out of the 45 members of the Council were elected in public vote. With a voter turnout of 63.5%, the elections “triggered intense public debate and limited demonstrations by representatives of certain tribes discriminated by the electoral regulations.”
The Gulf state’s constitution calls for the election of 30 seats within the Shura Council, with the remaining 15 seats being appointed by Qatar’s Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. In last year’s elections, the Amir elected two women, neither of which has ran in the elections.
Qatar also became the first country in the region to achieve the abolition of the Kafala system in August 2020.
The changes allow migrant workers to change jobs before the end of their contract without first having to obtain a ‘No Objection Certificate’ (NOC) from their employer, dismantling the controversial Kafala system completely and providing protection for workers in the country.
Before the Kafala system was dismantled in 2020, migrant workers needed to obtain their employer’s permission by obtaining a ‘no-objection certificate (NOC)’ before changing jobs.
The law had previously allowed several workers to be exploited and caused an unequal power balance between workers and their employers, according to activists. However, despite the amendment of the law, some private companies reportedly continue to break the law.
Between September 2020 and March 2022, over 300,000 workers (including 7,000 domestic workers) were able to change their jobs as per an ILO report.
