Qataris ask for worker relocation

Manama: Qatar's Central Municipal Council (CMC) has urged the private sector to promote awareness about local customs and traditions among its foreign employees in a bid to ease simmering tensions between locals and expatriates.

The request follows a string of complaints by Qatari nationals about "lack of respect and menace from expatriate bachelors to local values and traditions" and calls to relocate them in designated areas. "The workers must be told by their employers to dress properly and not create nuisance in residential localities," Shaikha Al Jefairi, a CMC member, said.

Qataris told Qatar Radio's morning call-in programme Good Morning, Qatar that they were uneasy and felt "threatened" by single workers living in their midst in large numbers, Qatari daily The Peninsula reported yesterday.

However, Shaikha said that people "must have some patience and wait for the relevant law to be enforced".

"Regulations that ban foreigners' accommodation camps in residential localities might take one or even two years to be implemented. Until then I urge families to have patience," she said, quoted by the daily.

Grace period

Rules on re-locating the accommodation camps have been passed, but companies have been given a year's grace period to make alternative arrangements and shift them to designated areas outside localities where families live.

"Almost every morning we hear of complaints from fellow nationals about single workers living in their midst and making their lives difficult. Even in my area [Old Airport] there are a lot of accommodation camps," she said.

"So until the regulations are enforced, the Qatar Chamber of Commerce and Industry (QCCI), a representative body of the private sector, should convene a meeting of member companies and ask them to make their workers aware of local customs and traditions and to respect these," she said.