Qatar has taken legal action against 106 companies whose sites it found were violating a law that bans outdoor work during summer, said local reports on Wednesday.
The mercury in Qatar is often known to rise to around 42-43°C (108-109°F) during daytime in summer, making heat stress a credible threat to the lives of those working outdoors.
Having faced criticism for allowing such labor for years, Qatar in May this year enacted a new law that, among other things, restricted companies from making laborers work outside under such sweltering conditions.
The new law prohibited laborers from working outside between 10 am and 3:30 pm every day from June 1 and to September 15, and this would be enforced every year.
Qatar’s labor ministry has now said the 106 companies it pulled up were caught during an intensive inspection campaign it organized to ensure they were adhering to necessary precautions put in place to protect workers from heat stress.
In July, inspectors reportedly visited several worksites, forcing violators to close the sites for three days because they violated the law.
The ministry said the violating companies are chiefly from the contracting sector: building maintenance, to be specific.
“The inspections carried out by the Ministry’s inspectors at work sites from July 1 to 31 July resulted in a violation of (106) companies, most of which work in the contracting sector in various regions of the country,” the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs said in a statement.
In recent years, Qatar has been heavily engaged in implementing new laws and regulations to ensure workers’ safety ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
The local climate has already affected the tournament in many ways. Primary among them is the fact that this will be the first time the competition will take place in winter.
The building of stadiums for the World Cup also brought to the fore several labor issues, like the conditions in which they were forced to work.
This led to a global outcry, with activists saying the practice was a violation of human rights. As a result, Qatar amended the law to favor not just those helping build the soccer stadiums but all laborers in the country.