Have any major companies been made aware of the appalling working conditions at some of their construction sites in Qatar? L’Oeil du 20 heures went to a huge cement plant located about forty kilometers from Doha, belonging to Beton Qatar. A company that would have called on Bouygues and subsidiaries of Vinci to carry out huge projects in the Emirate: a business district in Doha, a public park or even a metro line.
In the middle of the desert, in the deafening noise of machines running 24 hours a day, hundreds of African and Asian workers work and live here. Ramou – his name has been changed – guides us to his dormitory, actually construction huts, where the ground is sometimes covered with mud. In this room of about 10 square meters, they live in four while Qatari law imposes a minimum of 6 square meters per worker. “This is the kitchen”specifies Ramou in front of a makeshift stove.
Here, the concrete and its dust do not stop at the bedroom doors. “If you don’t cover, everything will be white dust tomorrowsays our host. Since I’ve been working here, my chest hurts. Before, I had nothing“, he adds. Ramou claims to be paid around 1000 euros per month for 70 hours of work per week, seven days a week, without a single day off. Two years ago, he says he was the victim of a A few weeks after the accident, he claims to have been forced to return to his country of origin for treatment, at his own expense.
Bouygues and Vinci aware of working conditions?
After our shoot, we tried to contact his employer, Beton Qatar, the company that manages the cement plant. Without success. On its website, the company presents the projects in which it has participated and its customers in Qatar. Among them, two French groups. Bouygues but also subsidiaries of the Vinci group: VCGP and QDVC.
Were the French groups aware of the living and working conditions of their supplier’s workers, whom we met in the cement plant? When contacted, Bouygues told us that it did not want to communicate on its past sites. Here is Vinci’s response, joined this Wednesday, November 9: “We found in our archives very specific contracts dating back more than ten years with Béton Qatar. During our projects, we have implemented very strict procedures with subcontractors, but we cannot do this with all suppliers.“Vinci also specifies that it has dismissed several local companies which did not respect the rights of employees.