Stranded in Qatar without jobs, money or passports
Doha: Nguyen Van Dung, a 23-year-old Vietnamese national, has been stranded in Doha for eight months without money, food and documents after the Qatari company he was working for shut down and its management disappeared.
Since November 2006, Dung and another 65 Vietnamese and Nepalese nationals without personal documents can neither be repatriated nor find other jobs and sponsors because the Qatari law considers them illegal immigrants.
"I want to go back to Vietnam, but I have no passport and no money," Dung told Gulf News.
There is no Vietnamese embassy in Qatar and Dung has been unable to reach out to his country officials in Dubai to ask for help.
Rescued
Speaking to Gulf News about his case, Gokul Kunwar, a Nepalese national who has rescued Dung and other stranded workers by offering them food and shelter, said the Vietnamese youth left his country eight months ago leaving behind a poor family of six, including his parents, grandmother and three sisters.
Dung paid the equivalent of $2,000 (Dh7,340) to an agent to make the trip to Qatar, but after working 15 days for a Qatari company, the management disappeared leaving 65 workers in a labour accommodation without money, food or documents.
Together with a group of volunteers of different nationalities, Gokul rented a villa to shelter the group in December 2006, which relies on charity and donations to survive.
Dung was an electrician in his country and would be willing to work, but according to Qatari law, workers without work permits cannot take up other jobs. His case has not been investigated by the local authorities, according to Gokul.
Amal Ebrahim, an expert at the National Office for Combating Human Trafficking, downplayed the responsibilities of Qatar's authorities on the issue, saying that the first to be blamed in cases such as Dung's are the countries of origin.
"His case is similar to thousands of others in Qatar and the rest of the Gulf countries," said Nabeel Rajab, vice-president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights here in Doha during a recent meeting on migrants workers' rights.
The National Human Rights Committee, a semi- government body tasked with solving cases of human rights abuse, has pledged to follow up Dung's case.
