At one building which residents said housed 1,200 people in Doha were told they had just two hours to leave
\nDOHA
\nQatar has emptied apartment blocks housing thousands of foreign workers in the same areas in the centre of the capital Doha where visiting soccer fans will stay during the World Cup, workers who were evicted from their homes told Reuters.
\nThey said more than a dozen buildings had been evacuated and shut down by authorities, forcing the mainly Asian and African workers to seek what shelter they could – including bedding down on the pavement outside one of their former homes.
\nThe move comes less than four weeks before the Nov. 20 start of the global soccer tournament which has drawn intense international scrutiny of Qatar\u2019s treatment of foreign workers and its restrictive social laws.
\nAt one building which residents said housed 1,200 people in Doha\u2019s Al Mansoura district, authorities told people at about 8 pm on Wednesday they had just two hours to leave.
\nMunicipal officials returned around 10.30 pm, forced everyone out and locked the doors to the building, they said. Some men had not been able to return in time to collect their belongings.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t have anywhere to go,\u201d one man told Reuters the next day as he prepared to sleep out for a second night with around 10 other men, some of them shirtless in the autumn heat and humidity of the Gulf Arab state.
\nHe, and most other workers who spoke to Reuters, declined to give their names or personal details for fear of reprisals from the authorities or employers.
\nNearby, five men were loading a mattress and a small fridge into the back of a pickup truck. They said they had found a room in Sumaysimah, about 40 km (25 miles) north of Doha.
\nA Qatari government official said the evictions are unrelated to the World Cup and were designed \u201cin line with ongoing comprehensive and long-term plans to re-organise areas of Doha.\u201d
\n\u201cAll have since been rehoused in safe and appropriate accommodation,\u201d the official said, adding that requests to vacate \u201cwould have been conducted with proper notice.\u201d
\nWorld soccer\u2019s governing body FIFA did not respond to a request for comment and Qatar\u2019s World Cup organisers directed inquiries to the government.
\n\u201cDELIBERATE GHETTO-ISATION\u201d
\nAround 85% of Qatar\u2019s three million population are foreign workers. Many of those evicted work as drivers, day labourers or have contracts with companies but are responsible for their own accommodation – unlike those working for major construction firms who live in camps housing tens of thousands of people.
\nOne worker said the evictions targeted single men, while foreign workers with families were unaffected.
\nA Reuters reporter saw more than a dozen buildings where residents said people had been evicted. Some buildings had their electricity switched off.
\nMost were in neighbourhoods where the government has rented buildings for World Cup fan accommodation. The organisers\u2019 website lists buildings in Al Mansoura and other districts where flats are advertised for between $240 and $426 per night.
\nThe Qatari official said municipal authorities have been enforcing a 2010 Qatari law which prohibits \u201cworkers\u2019 camps within family residential areas\u201d – a designation encompassing most of central Doha – and gives them the power to move people out.
\nSome of the evicted workers said they hoped to find places to live amid purpose-built workers\u2019 accommodation in and around the industrial zone on Doha\u2019s southwestern outskirts or in outlying cities, a long commute from their jobs.
\nThe evictions \u201ckeep Qatar\u2019s glitzy and wealthy facade in place without publicly acknowledging the cheap labour that makes it possible,\u201d said Vani Saraswathi, Director of Projects at Migrant-Rights.org, which campaigns for foreign workers in the Middle East. \u201cThis is deliberate ghetto-isation at the best of times. But evictions with barely any notice are inhumane beyond comprehension.\u201d
\nSome workers said they had experienced serial evictions.
\nOne said he was forced to change buildings in Al Mansoura at the end of September, only to be moved on 11 days later with no prior notice, along with some 400 others. \u201cIn one minute, we had to move,\u201d he said.
\nMohammed, a driver from Bangladesh, said he had lived in the same neighbourhood for 14 years until Wednesday, when the municipality told him he had 48 hours to leave the villa he shared with 38 other people.
\nHe said labourers who built up the infrastructure for Qatar to host the World Cup were being pushed aside as the tournament approaches.
\n\u201cWho made the stadiums? Who made the roads? Who made everything? Bengalis, Pakistanis. People like us. Now they are making us all go outside.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At one building which residents said housed 1,200 people in Doha were told they had just two hours to leave DOHA Qatar has emptied apartment blocks housing thousands of foreign workers in the same areas in the centre of the capital Doha where visiting soccer fans will stay during the World Cup, workers who were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292445,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-292418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n