"In 2015, when I joined Leighton Contracting Qatar as a land surveyor, I felt proud,” Varun Babu, a migrant worker from India, recalled. “Big company and good salary – we built the Doha Orbital Highway, part of the 2022 FIFA World Cup! But in March 2020, everything turned upside down.”
Covid-19 in Qatar. Given the thousands of migrant workers who died while building infrastructure for the games, the pandemic’s non-lethal effects in the country can feel almost like a footnote. But the terminated employment and theft of wages and benefits that thousands of migrant workers experienced as the virus spread constitute a tragedy unto themselves. For many, it was never resolved.
“The company called us to the office and told us to resign,” Babu continued. “I didn't, because it is hard to reclaim the end-of-service benefits if we resign. But if they terminate us, we can claim it.”
