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Qatar: Free legal aid centre for workers

DOHA: Qatar is setting up a free legal aid centre for low-income foreign workers who, as a last resort, seek the court's help to resolve their disputes with employers.

The said centre will enable an aggrieved worker to file a lawsuit with ease against his employers (private companies covered by the labour law).

The proposed facility, arguably the first of its kind in the entire Middle East, is being established by the Ministry of Labour in the West Bay Court Complex.

Since low-income workers can hardly afford the services of a lawyer and most don't know Arabic, which is the language of the courts in Qatar, the centre will basically act as a lawyer for the poor litigants.

The centre will provide all kinds of assistance free of charge to aggrieved workers -- from enquiring about the nature of their complaint and telling them whether a court case can be filed, to actually helping them file a lawsuit.

The centre will also provide free translation services to poor litigants and their necessary documents that need to be submitted to court will be translated into Arabic and the translation will be considered official.

The labour ministry will be deploying experienced staff members from its legal affairs department to man the said office which will also be following up on the cases that are forwarded to the court by the labour ministry itself.

The ministry's labour relations department looks into worker-employer disputes and amicably resolves most of them and refers the unresolved, complicated ones to the court, though their percentage is small.

The proposed centre is being set up in close coordination with the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) and an agreement to the effect has recently been signed between the labor ministry and the SJC.

The Minister for Social Affairs and Acting Minister for Labor, H E Nasser bin Abdullah Al Humaidi, and the Chairman of SJC, Masaood bin Mohamed Al Aamri, inked the above deal.

Speaking on the occasion, Al Humaidi said the proposed centre will guide workers having disputes with employers on how to go about filing a lawsuit.

"A worker will be guided from step A to Z as far as filing lawsuits are concerned," he added.

Al Aamri lauded the labor ministry's role and said the labor law empowers it to take steps to help workers resolve their woes.

"It's a good move considering that workers are from different nationalities and speak different languages. Most cannot file a lawsuit on their own so they need all kinds of assistance," the SJC chief said.

Contacted for comment, lawyer Yusuf Al Zaman told this newspaper, appreciating the labour ministry's move, that the centre would basically act a 'lawyer' for a poor litigant worker free of charge.

© The Peninsula 2012