Manama: Under fire for allegedly not paying sufficient attention to Qataris’ problems and looking only into foreign workers’ woes, Qatar’s National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) is taking steps to address “a wrong perception” about its role.
The rights watchdog is now planning to conduct a study to find out what people in the Qatari community actually think about it and its role and whether they really believe that it is paying attention to foreign workers’ problems at their expense.
The study will also seek to create public awareness about the committee’s real role in society and fight wrong impressions, a senior NHRC official said, Qatari daily The Peninsula reported.
“The NHRC has taken up a number of issues relating to nationals and has received and addressed a large number of complaints regarding various issues from citizens,” Mohamed Abdullah Al Madadi said. “So the impression that the rights body only looks after the interests of low-income foreign workers needs to be rectified. We are launching the study in collaboration with Qatar University.”
The NHRC also has plans to launch a campaign to make low-income workers aware of the restricted number of summer working hours as prescribed by the labour ministry, he said.
