res : Kirimlah jurnalis indepen yang bermutu dari Jakarta untuk menulis tentang perlakuan terhadap TKI di negeri-negeri Arab.
http://www.antaranews.com/berita/417354/menakertrans-qatar-sediakan-ribuan-lowongan-tki Menakertrans: Qatar sediakan ribuan lowongan TKI Selasa, 4 Februari 2014 16:53 WIB | 409 Views Pewarta: Arie Novarina Menakertrans Muhaimin Iskandar (FOTO ANTARA/Dhoni Setiawan) TKI formal Indonesia sudah diakui kualitasnya Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Menteri Tenaga Kerja dan Transmigrasi Muhaimin Iskandar mengatakan Pemerintah Qatar masih membuka ribuan lowongan kerja bagi para tenaga kerja Indonesia (TKI). Lowongan tersebut antara lain di bidang minyak dan gas, perhotelan dan industri jasa wisata, teknologi informasi, konstruksi, serta perawat. "Kita terus mendorong peningkatan jumlah penempatan TKI formal yang bekerja di Qatar. Apalagi TKI formal Indonesia sudah diakui kualitasnya oleh para user atau perusahaan-perusahaan di Qatar," kata Muhaimin Iskandar seusai menerima kunjungan Duta Besar Qatar untuk Indonesia Ahmad Abdullah Ahmad Gholo Al-Muhanedi di Jakarta, Selasa. Saat ini, berdasarkan data Kemenakertrans lebih dari 40.000 TKI bekerja di Qatar yang rata-rata bekerja di industri minyak dan gas. Pada 2013, jumlah TKI yang masuk dan terdaftar di KBRI Doha pada tahun tersebut berjumlah 6.716 orang dengan rincian sebanyak 101 orang bekerja sebagai profesional dan skill labour lainnya, serta sisanya sebanyak 6.615 TKI bekerja sebagai penatalaksana rumah tangga atau sektor domestik. Selain pekerjaan di sektor formal, Muhaimin pun meminta pemerintah Qatar agar memperkuat kerja sama dalam melakukan upaya-upaya meningkatkan perlindungan bagi TKI informal yang bekerja di sektor domestik. Beberapa hak normatif yang harus dipenuhi oleh negara penempatan terhadap TKI antara lain hak mendapatkan akses komunikasi dengan keluarga setiap saat yang berada di daerah asal dan dengan pihak perwakilan RI dan mendapatkan hari libur sehari dalam seminggu. Selain itu, hak untuk dapat memegang paspornya sendiri sebagai identitas diri dan hak mendapatkan jaminan bahwa gaji tetap diterima setiap bulan yang dibayarkan melalui sistem perbankan dan perjanjian kerja melalui sistem online elektronik. Sementara, untuk memperbaiki sistem penempatan calon TKI pekerja domestik, TKI harus mendapatkan pelatihan keterampilan pra-pemberangkatan selama 300 sampai 400 jam. "Pembenahan yang sedang dilakukan dapat memberikan win-win solution bagi kedua belah pihak dalam pelaksanaan penempatan dan perlindungan TKI. Artinya tenaga kerja yang bekerja di sektor domestik lebih terlindungi dan pengguna mendapatkan tenaga kerja yang berkualitas," kata Muhaimin Sementara itu, Duta besar Qatar untuk Indonesia Ahmad Abdullah Ahmad Gholo Al-Muhanedi mengatakan Pemerintah Qatar meminta bantuan kepada pemerintah Indonesia untuk menggenjot pengiriman TKI formal "Peluang kerja di sektor formal di Qatar masih terbuka lebar. Kami membutuhkan tenaga kerja asal Indonesia untuk menduduki jabatan formal di sejumlah sektor tersebut. Kami juga akan memprioritasikan TKI tersebut untuk menduduki sejumlah jabatan," kata Ahmad Abdullah. Qatar membutuhkan banyak tenaga kerja dengan semakin banyaknya ekspatriat yang datang dan menetap di negara tersebut. Saat ini terdapat lebih dari satu juta penduduk ekspatriat dari total dua juta penduduk yang harus dilayani oleh pemerintah Qatar. Editor: Heppy Ratna COPYRIGHT © 2014 +++++ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/far-from-qatars-bling-foreign-workers-say-theyre-living-a-nightmare/2013/11/19/32b9ef32-4a22-11e3-bf60-c1ca136ae14a_story.html Far from Qatar’s bling, foreign workers say they’re living a nightmare KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images - Migrant labourers work on a construction site in Doha, Qatar, on Oct. 3. a.. 18 b.. Share to Facebook c.. Share on Twitter d.. Share on LinkedIn e.. Add to PersonalPost f.. Share via Email g.. Print Article h.. More By Abigail Hauslohner, Published: November 20 E-mail the writer 48 UNITS LABOR CAMP, Qatar — The camps sit at the end of an empty desert highway, past miles of bleak factories and turned-up concrete. The earth, walls and sky are pale gray. Dust collects everywhere — in the throat, the nostrils and in the corners of the eyes. Less than 20 miles from the heart of Qatar’s capital, Doha, this is where many of the thousands of migrant workers who built that gleaming city come home to sleep at night. Qatar, the richest country per capita on the planet, is divided into two worlds. One exemplifies this Persian Gulf monarchy’s ambitions — a skyline of majestic new high-rises, sprawling universities and elegant museums; the fast-developing city on the sea that is set to host soccer’s 2022 World Cup. The other is here, among the spare, bug-infested bunk beds of Qatar’s migrant workforce. This is where the movers and builders of the kingdom’s magic live, the migrant workers say. And it’s a world almost entirely devoid of Qataris. “What Qatari is going to talk to us?” said a 38-year-old Pakistani who drives other migrant workers to and from construction sites. “The foremen don’t talk to us. Why would a Qatari?” In the 14 years that the man has lived in the gas-rich peninsula, he has never once interacted with a Qatari. He has never visited any of the luxury hotels or shopping malls that migrant labor built, nor has he walked the seaside corniche, or taken in a day at the museums that are helping to make this country famous. Qatar has the world’s highest ratio of migrants to citizens, with its 250,000 nationals accounting for only about 12 percent of the population. The vast majority of Qatar’s workforce came here from South Asia, often paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to secure a job through recruitment agencies at home, laborers and rights groups say. But once they get here, workers said, the companies they work for confiscate their passports; threaten them with fines and salary reductions for equipment damage or sick days; and send them to work 12- to 15-hour days under a searing sun and temperatures that can top 105 degrees. In interviews, dozens of laborers — all of whom complained of abusive, slavelike working conditions and asked not to be named for fear of being fired — said they sleep 10 to a room in bleak labor camps. The workers said their average earnings are less than $4,000 a year. Their daily lives mark a stark contrast to that of the average Qatari, who receives free health care, education and electricity, as well as guaranteed access to high-paying jobs in the public sector, subsidized fuel, interest-free housing loans and stipends for education abroad. Political analysts and some officials have said that the international spotlight brought on by Qatar’s successful bid for the soccer World Cup marks a golden opportunity for this tiny monarchy to get its house in order. Nasser al-Khater, a spokesman for the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, called the country’s chance to host the international tournament a potential “catalyst for change in Qatar and in the region.” “Q22 takes the human rights of workers very seriously,” and the committee is in the final stages of developing a set of worker- welfare standards “aligned with international best practice — with which contractors working on Q22 projects will be contractually obligated to comply,” Khater said in an e-mail. Qatar is building stadiums and a metro line, and it is overhauling large swaths of Doha’s basic infrastructure in preparation for the influx of international visitors. “It is our hope that improvement of the labor conditions in Qatar will be one of the most significant social legacies of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar,” he said. The spotlight has been harsh. A September investigation by Britain’s Guardian newspaper revealed that dozens of Nepalese workers had died on the job over the course of several weeks and that thousands of others face abuses amounting to modern-day slavery. The report said most worker deaths are related to heart failure, which health professionals say results from untreated heatstroke. On Sunday, the London-based advocacy group Amnesty International called on FIFA, soccer’s governing body, to “send a strong public message that it will not tolerate human rights abuses on construction projects related to the World Cup.” In its report, Amnesty said the spending on construction projects to expand Qatar’s infrastructure ahead of the tournament could reach $220 billion, although projects directly related to the event might account for only $4 billion. Another advocacy group, Human Rights Watch, said in its annual report released earlier this year that despite Doha’s promises of labor reforms after its successful bid in 2010 for the World Cup, there has been almost no progress. “If this persists, the tournament threatens to turn Qatar into a crucible of exploitation and misery for the workers who will build it,” Jan Egeland, the Europe director for Human Rights Watch, said in the group’s 2013 World Report. Foreign analysts who follow the country closely say some members of Qatar’s royal family may be serious about labor reforms but are up against a wall of domestic obstacles. According to Justin Gengler, a senior researcher at Qatar University’s Social and Economic Survey Research Institute, most Qataris think the kafala, or sponsorship, system that rights groups highlight as a key factor in labor abuses needs to be more restrictive — not less. The kafala system locks migrant workers into a contract with their host companies that makes it prohibitively difficult for the workers to travel, lobby for better rights or move to a different job. “A lot of people benefit directly from it,” Gengler said. Because companies assume the living expenses and legal responsibility for their workers, he said, they stand to lose money when a worker tries to leave. This month, François Crépeau, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, called on Qatar to abolish the kafala system, saying the mechanism was a source of labor abuses. He described a labor camp that he visited as a “slum.” But in interviews, Qataris, migrant laborers and other expatriates also described an ingrained set of local attitudes toward race and class that has made it difficult for Qataris to empathize with the men and women they have hired to build their state. One businessman, who has presided over several large Doha infrastructure projects, dismissed worker complaints as a product of origin rather than labor conditions. “Pakistanis and Indians are hard workers, so they don’t complain,” he said, speaking on the condition on anonymity to be candid. But members of certain other nations, he said, “are all politicians. Very easily, they can go to their embassy complaining that something doesn’t fit.” At the camps, laborers said, their daily lives are so unbearable that they can’t wait to escape. “I hate working here,” said one Indian driver who supports a large extended family through the money he sends home. “I’m here because I’m forced to be.” In six years, the driver said, he has been allowed only two visits to India. “The last time I went, I got married,” he said. He spent a month with his new wife before returning to Qatar for what he anticipated would be an additional two years away. Other workers gathered around him in the darkness and the dust, offering stories of frustration, exhaustion and loneliness. Workers descended from buses along the unpaved roads and shuffled somber-faced through the darkness, clutching their orange hard hats. Some wore neon vests or jumpsuits; others bore a reflection of distant homelands — the Bangladeshis in sarongs, the Pakistani Pashtuns in salwar-kameez, a traditional ensemble consisting of a tunic and baggy trousers. After a dinner of roti, rice and boiled vegetables in the camp mess halls, they would get up at 4 a.m. to do it all over again the next day. “We’ve been thrown in a jungle, very far from the city,” said one Bangladeshi construction worker. The Qataris, he said, “are living in heaven.” ++++++ http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/11/18/245990852/foreign-workers-abused-in-qatar-report-says Foreign Workers Abused In Qatar, Report Says by Krishnadev Calamur November 18, 2013 3:05 PM Foreign laborers work at the site of a new road in Doha, Qatar, last month. According to recent media reports, immigrants working on projects for the World Cup in 2022 have been subject to abuse and harsh working conditions. EPA /LANDOV Our friends over at the Two-Way about disturbing allegations against Qatar for its handling of migrant workers building the country's infrastructure for the 2022 soccer World Cup. Those revelations were first reported in . This week we have more allegations, this time from . "The abuses against migrant workers in the construction sector in Qatar are grim," the human rights group says. More than 1 million foreigners work in Qatar, and they make up 94 percent of the country's workforce, Amnesty says. The group says workers who arrive in Qatar are often paid less than what they were promised — that's when they get paid at all. Some workers often have their passports confiscated so they can't leave; others are made to work under extreme conditions and are "treated like cattle." : "Earlier this month a U.N. official called on Qatar to abolish the kafala, or sponsorship system, used by many Gulf Arab states, under which employees cannot change jobs or leave the country without the permission of their sponsors. "Many sponsors, often labour supply firms or wealthy Qataris who provide workers to businesses for profit, confiscate the passports of guest workers for the duration of their contracts." Qatar, as , has emerged in recent years as a new power in the Middle East. It owns Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language broadcaster whose programs can be seen around the world. The World Cup would be the crowning glory for the tiny emirate. Some estimates suggest that $220 billion is being spent to expand the country's infrastructure ahead of the World Cup. Workers for that effort come mainly from South Asia. Here's more from : "Amnesty's study comes a week after FIFA President Sepp Blatter visited the emir of Qatar to share FIFA's concern about working conditions after newspaper investigations highlighted alleged human rights abuses and deaths in the extreme heat. "There have been long-standing concerns about the lack of safeguards for the mainly South Asian migrant laborers in Qatar and across the Gulf, including low-grade housing and employers withholding the worker passports." In response, a Qatari Foreign Ministry official that the country was "doing its utmost" to protect human rights. Qatar's government has hired the global law firm DLA Piper to look at issues surrounding the construction sector, the news agency said. FIFA, soccer's governing body, said it upholds "respect for human rights." But FIFA chief Blatter added: "The workers' rights will be the responsibility for Qatar and the companies — many of them European companies — who work there. It is not FIFA's primary responsibility but we cannot turn a blind eye. Yet it is not a direct intervention from FIFA that can change things." Amnesty International said it was concerned by FIFA's approach. Amnesty's report comes amid criticism of the way foreign workers are treated in other Arab countries. Saudi authorities have on workers illegally in the country, an effort that led to riots last week. Human Rights Watch has migrant workers "suffer multiple abuses and labor exploitation, sometimes amounting to slavery-like conditions" in the country. Widespread abuse is also alleged in the , where nearly 90 percent of all residents are foreigners.
