Salary Disparity Makes Asian Workers Unhappy: Qatar HR Officials

A majority of representatives from human resources departments of local companies on Tuesday alleged that the discrimination in salaries between European and Asian expatriates was leading to discontentment among Asian workforce in Qatar.

Participating in an interactive session organised by bayt.com, a premier job surveying agency of the region, one of the representatives said, “We have lost some good workers just because of this discrimination.
There cannot be any justification for giving two persons the same position but different salary.” Supporting him, another Qatari HR personnel said, “The public sector can afford to pay more money and can hire people of different nationalities with varying pay structures.

But a private company cannot.

At the end of the day what matters for us is profit.

We cannot hire a European accountant for a monthly salary of QR20,000 when we can get an Asian accountant for QR5,000.” Another representative of a local company said that while there was enough justification for having two salary structures, one for Qatari workers and the other for non-Qataris, there was no justification whatsoever for discrimination among non-Qataris in terms of salary packages.

However, a couple of HR personnel tried to justify different salary structures for different nationalities.
A representative said, “We have to understand that the cost of living is higher in Europe than in Asia and, therefore, a European expatriate’s expectation in terms of salary is higher than that of an Asian expatriate.
Hence, we cannot have the same salary structure for both.” Sales vice-president of bayt.com Amer Zureikat quoted a recent survey on salary and said, “Sixty-eight percent of employees in the GCC care only about their salaries rather than work environment or job satisfaction.

Eighty-five percent of the working population was ready to switch their career because of the rising cost of living.”

(Source: Qatar Tribune)