Special cities to house 180,000 workers in Qatar

Doha — Qatar signed the first contracts on a mega-accommodation project which will eventually see almost 180,000 migrant workers housed in seven specially built “cities.” All seven sites could be in operation within two years, said officials at a ceremony in Doha attended by Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al-Thani and Labor Minister Abdullah Bin Saleh Al-Khulaifi. “The whole project will be completed by the end of 2017,” said Jamal Shareeda Al-Kaabi, a director of the Central Planning Office, which oversees major infrastructure projects. The sites are being built in addition to the $825 million Labor City, a vast housing complex on the fringes of the capital with space for almost 70,000 workers, which opened earlier this year. Many of the laborers who will be housed on the sites will be working on infrastructure projects directly or indirectly related to the 2022 World Cup. Earlier in the year, Khulaifi described the huge-scale new housing complexes as “cities” and told AFP they were the “future” for worker accommodation in Qatar. The contracts signed Thursday are between government officials and members of the private sector for the first accommodation centre, which will be located in Umm Slal, north of Doha. Umm Slal will house around 24,000 workers. All seven “cities” will be built through “public-private partnerships.” The final cost of building all the accommodation centers is not known but the government has put in 1.6 billion Qatari riyals ($440 million, 410 million euros) “for the provision of infrastructure,” according to a government factsheet. The cities will be built across Qatar, from the fringes of the capital Doha to one in the north. They incorporate facilities such as cafeterias, television rooms, gyms, mosques and other religious centers. Many of the workers who will end up living in the new centers will be transferred from other accommodation complexes in Qatar. The aim, said Kaabi, is to place laborers closer to their place of work as well as to improve accommodation standards “We have developed a strategy depending on demand forecast,” added Kaabi. “Basically we’re trying to facilitate a proper housing accommodation that meets the standards and requirements of the state with the best practice.” There are around 1.8 million migrant workers in Qatar but that will reach almost 2.5 million two years before the World Cup, officials have said. Qatar this week celebrated the fifth anniversary of being chosen to host football’s biggest tournament. Meanwhile, newly-released results from HSBC’s annual Expat Explorer survey show that Qatar is the best place in the world for expats under 35 years old who want to save up to buy their first home, The report, which surveyed 22,000 expats of different nationalities in over 100 countries, found that 31 percent of the young expats it questioned in Qatar had bought their first home while living here. The UAE came in second place, with 25 percent of young expats reporting that they could now afford to buy their first property. The two main reasons this was possible is because of housing allowances from employers, which 68 percent of those surveyed in Qatar received, and higher average wages than in expats’ home countries, with 71 percent of young expats here reporting an increase in earnings after moving. However, other reports this year have pointed to rising housing and school tuition costs as reasons why saving money is becoming harder for many Qatar residents. All ages The HSBC expat survey also asserted that the financial benefits of living in Qatar are not limited to only under-35s. According to the report, over three-quarters (76 percent) of those questioned in Qatar said their disposable income had increased as a result of moving, the highest percentage of all countries surveyed, while 75 percent said they had been able to save more in Qatar than at home. Some 24 percent of Qatar-based expats of all ages said they’d been able to buy a new property, and more than half (54 percent) said they could now enjoy more expensive holidays.