The pots of gold in West Asia aren’t getting bigger for the poor Indian fortune-seeker. If anything, trouble starts as soon as you set foot on these lands of oil, gas and untold riches.

The labour situation in Qatar isn’t as rosy as it seems from back home. There are loopholes within loopholes in the immigration rules/traditions and often the expatriate unskilled/semi-skilled labourer ends up being short changed.

Recently, the Indian Embassy was put in a position in which it was forced to feed 275 jobless, starving labourers from Bihar and UP. It has been six weeks since, and the Indian Embassy isn’t sure when this will end.

Dr George Joseph, the Indian Ambassador to Qatar, says this isn’t an isolated incident, though it is certainly one of the most high profile, because of the sheer number of labourers involved.

“The problem arose some six months back, when a Saudi construction company, Thinet, had its contract rescinded by the Qatar government when they failed on delivery schedule,” George told The Indian Express here. “As a result the company shut its Qatar operations and the workers, mostly unskilled and semi-skilled—who arrived here through different recruiting agencies—were left out in the cold.

Money started running out, with the labourers being forced to scrounge and sometimes even beg for basic amenities. The company fed them at their ‘camp’ for four months, but thereafter the labourers were on their own. “Six weeks back they arrived at the embassy gates, hungry and helpless. Trickles of help that was coming to them from their friends here had also dried up. So we were forced to provide them rations and medicines. We have intervened on their behalf with their employers, and talks are on, but progress has been slow,” said the Ambassador.

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