For around a year and a half now ILQ’s been running a bit of a ‘charity’, where we wanted to show thanks to those labourers who’ve worked so hard to build Qatar.

It started when a bunch of us wanted to show our appreciation by doing something small.
So we took donations (link on the left side of the site) and we took 25% of any profit generated on ILQ and decided to buy shirts, wet towels, pocket radios, and some cold drinks.

So once a month, we pick a random work site and head off with our coolers. It’s great to see their satisfaction.

We also took it a step further with calling cards. These people make such low salaries that we decided to give them some calling cards so that they could call their families back home and let them know their fine.

If you’d like to donate, use the button on the left of the site to help them out!

So thanks to all those hard-working blue collar workers for making my country a country of the future.

Remember! If you don’t have the time or the means, just give them a smile! It’s nice to see a friendly face.

You’d think that with all this talk of Qatarisation, things would be a bit easier.
We’re in the process of highering a secretary in the office (not ILQ but my day job office). So we started to search for Qatari secretaries.

We needed an Arabic and English speaker, we thought that we’d want to help Qataris searching for jobs, and that we’d be helping the system.

So we knew that the Ministry of Labour had a list of Qataris searching for jobs. We went to http://www.mlsa.gov.qa/Pages/default.aspx in order to get the number (side note, the English section is under construction and it’s probably going to remain that way for a couple of years).

How can the english side not be up yet? There should at least be a basic page so that foreigners can also search for Qataris to hire, especially if it’s a rule now.

You’ll finally get the following number 4841111. Give it a call. If you get an answer, you’ll win… win….. satisfaction. The type of satisfaction that comes with a hint of shock

We called for three days and nobody answered. How can we help Qataris if nobody answers? Why isn’t the database of employees searching for jobs accessible online?

So my colleague decides to head off to the Ministry and speak to someone. He meets someone in an office who promises to email us the list.

After receiving a list of graduates and non-graduates we go through it systematically.

I’ve now read every unusual (yes I heard some names I’ve never heard of before) name and heard every exception in the book.

- I want to wear the niqab in the office (against policy)
- I want my own office (you’re going to be a secretary..)
- I want a higher salary (do a good job first!)
- I don’t want to be in a mixed office (we live in a mixed world)
- I don’t like your company (fair enough… but if you’re on a government job site should you be so picky?)

The list goes on! We finally find TWO out of 100 people that seem suitable, ask for their cvs, they sound happy, and they send nothing…

As usual everything is messed up. From the institutions to the inviduals the institutions are trying to help.

side note: for those that can’t read the ‘about’ section or couldn’t have guessed by the title of the blog. I’m Qatari.

I was being driven to my home by Dr. A, yes yes, Mr. Q and Dr. A, Questions and Answers, Qatari and…. Axpat… ok that doesn’t work; and was marveling at the huge sky scrapers in westbay and wondering when they’d start building a bit out of westbay and into other areas when I suddenly started to think about what we don’t see.

Qatar is indeed a land of variety. You get a variety of nationalities, ages, religions, and classes. On one end of Doha, you’ll find broken up roads with holes large enough for the ozone to fall in to; on the other end, you’ll find luxury apartments, amazing roads with greenery and trees, and shopping malls underneath towering cranes. Alright, you’ll find this everywhere, however what makes this food for thought is that this isn’t caused by natural evolution.

Laziness from people who can make a difference causes lack of maintanence and degradation. Rich tyrants use labourers as slaves to make them richer. Authorities are complacent about enforcing some of the more basic but fundamental laws.

I was thinking about the labour camps of Doha. I visit a couple of the hidden ones behind high walls. I felt as if I was walking into a prison yard. One of my most prominent memories was when ILQ participated in aiding the fire victims. We walked into the camp and looked around to see faces emerge from the tiny streets, from their windowless windows and from behind scraps of metal. They all looked at us as if we had found them in one of those huge shipping containers you see on tv when the smuggle Mexicans or Chinese in the US.

How difficult or costly would it be to set up a microvillage made OUT of those shipping containers? Steel costs too much? Fine, how about using those temporary office spaces as accommodation? They’ll last! You want them to take care of it? Here’s a plan, how about giving them a little speech telling them how they need to take care of the home they live in. How about giving them some basic farming tools and tell them that a bonus will be given to the best garden in their unit? See how productive thinking works?

Forget the expensive Barwa project, this environmentally friendly and quick alternative could create an amazing labour village. The difference? It could be finished in months.

It’s all about education. Educate the public as well as the labourers. They’re smart enough to build a skyscraper, I’m sure they’ll be smart enough to start a productive community.