[Published here January 28, 2022]
Staff at Qatar Airways who vent work worries online say the state carrier is retaliating with legal threats and job cuts – part of a growing corporate trend to monitor and muzzle employees who dare speak out.
Advocates say the carrier’s attempts to silence employees and delete critical posts – be it in private or public forums – contravenes staff rights to privacy and free expression.
Continue reading[Published here January 27, 2022]
Pilots at Qatar Airways say the state-owned airline is under-counting their work hours and ignoring complaints of fatigue – a safety breach that hurts staff health and risks passenger lives.
The testimony demonstrates how worker abuse extends even to the Gulf nation’s high-skill industries, as Qatar Airways (QA) tries to minimise crew downtime.
Continue reading[Published here on December 28, 2021]
The decline had been steep and painful already. By the time Lebanon entered 2021, thousands had already lost their jobs, around half the population had been plunged into poverty, and the explosion at the Beirut port the previous year had stolen lives, limbs, and homes.
But this year, Lebanon simply began to come apart at the seams.
Continue reading[Published here on December 16, 2021]
What could bring Syrian refugees, Sudanese migrants and marginalised Lebanese around the same table in Beirut? The threat of eviction – and the housing rights project trying to prevent it.
Continue reading[Published here December 16, 2021]
Lebanon has for the first time eased restrictions on thousands of undocumented workers – but advocates say the long-awaited move fails to protect a community that struggles to survive even on the outer margins of life.
Continue reading[Published here December 14, 2021]
Global warming of 3 degrees Celsius could cost as much as $1.6 trillion each year in lost labour productivity as even the coolest hours of the day start posing major health risks to workers in parts of the world, researchers said on Tuesday.
Those most threatened will be outdoor workers in already-hot countries where temperatures and humidity are rising fast, possibly threatening the economic lifeline of South Asian migrants seeking jobs in Gulf nations.
Continue reading[Published here November 2021]
TRIPOLI, Nov 10 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – After patiently waiting in line, Umm Mustafa extended two grubby plastic containers to a soup kitchen volunteer, who ladled in rice and stewed greens. It would be the only meal the unemployed single mother and her three sons would eat that day.
Continue reading[Published here November 3, 2021]
As a key U.N. summit in Glasgow this week searches for ways to cut threats from global warming, one answer may lie in an unlikely place about 8,000 kilometres away: the tiny Gulf nation of Oman.
Continue reading[Published here October 28, 2021]
A surge of new net zero pledges from the Middle East’s oil producing nations has raised expectations ahead of the United Nations COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow starting Sunday – but campaigners say the promises fall far short of what is needed.
Continue reading[Published here October 22, 2021]
His motorbike’s tank almost empty, Ahmad had barely enough fuel to make one more delivery and get home for the night. When the 24-year-old Syrian’s phone pinged with a food order in a distant suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut, his heart sank.
Continue reading
MAYA GEBEILY 