By Larbi Arbaoui
By Larbi Arbaoui
Morocco World News
Taroudant, Morocco, June 22, 2012
According to Al Massae daily Newspaper, dozens of Moroccans went to work in Qatar through fake work contracts purchased for large sums of money ranging between thirty to forty thousand MAD. They found themselves stranded under the so called “Kafala”, sponsorship system.
Some victims of these tricky contracts emphasized that brokers in Morocco offered them tempting contracts in Qatar including a monthly salary of up to thirty thousand MAD. But to their utter disappointment, they discovered after their arrival that there is no work available at the party specified in the contract.
Their sufferings worsened when the sponsor specified in the contract didn’t provide the expected work and rejected allowing them to leave or transfer sponsorship to another person in order to enable them to work elsewhere.
One of the victims of this scam confirmed that a number of Moroccan immigrants are living under catastrophic conditions pointing out that those behind these swindling acts were Moroccan brokers in collusion with some institutions working in the service sector.
The spokesman also stressed that the status of these immigrants has become more disastrous than that of clandestine immigrants in Europe, after some had been forced to live in overcrowded rooms, waiting to find a solution that may grant them either a decent job or a ticket back to Morocco.
He added that they are subject to situations similar to hostages because of the sponsorship system, which reduces foreign employees to the state of slaves at the mercy of their employers. They are prohibited from working in any other company unless the transfer of sponsorship is done, as they are also deprived the right to travel.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) has previously criticized the sponsorship system applicable in the Gulf States and considered it as a comparable to slavery.
The organization Human Rights Watch also criticized strongly in its latest report the circumstances and practices that are experienced by foreign workforce in Qatar, which prompted the latter to declare its intention to cancel this system coinciding with the news reporting the need for a million workers in preparation for the organization of World Cup 2022.
The sponsorship system known as Kafala, which require foreign workers to have local sponsors, rigidly binds migrants to their employers, enabling the latter to commit abuses, while preventing workers from changing jobs or leaving the country.
© 2012 Morocco World News. All Rights Reserved
