DOHA, 29 August 2005 — Some 600 foreign construction workers, half of them Indian, have gone on strike in Qatar in protest at their employer’s failure to pay their salaries and poor living conditions, embassy and company officials said yesterday.

Four private Qatari companies and one United Arab Emirates-based firm are involved in the dispute. An official from Al-Ajaj Engineering Company, one of the firms involved in the strike, said he expected the issue to be resolved this week.

“We’ve been asked to intervene and help mediate,” one embassy official said, declining to be identified.

In 2004, Qatar became the third country in the region behind Kuwait and Bahrain, to allow workers the right to strike and form trade unions.

“Some 300 Indian (workers) and others from Sri Lanka and Nepal, in addition to some Egyptians, have been on strike for a few days” in protest at their treatment by their employer, said R. Chambre, second secretary in charge of labor at the Indian Embassy.

Chambre, who met some of her striking compatriots on Saturday, said the laborers had not been paid for periods ranging from two to six months and did not have medical facilities.

She said the workers also complained their employer did not carry out the requirements for residence permits and that they were living in bad conditions, with every 12 crammed in a single room and poor kitchen facilities.

One of the workers, 36-year-old Pakistani electrician Abdulaziz, said he had been promised a salary of 1000 riyals ($274.9) per month but that he was receiving only 600 riyals. “We’ve been trying to get the money owed to us for months and this is our last resort. But this is risky because each day not worked, is a day not paid,” he said.

Company officials will also meet with the National Human Rights Committee, a Qatari government watchdog, today or tomorrow, to discuss the issue.

The strike is the first since Qatar’s constitution, which grants the right to strike, came into force in June. But Asian workers have in the past repeatedly engaged in work stoppages and rallied outside their embassies to press their demands.