DOHA (Middle East Eye) – “There’s nothing wrong being khadama,” writes TikTok user jofaaw in a video caption, using the Arabic word for maid. “We are human like you, we are workers, not a slave.”
The Qatar-based worker was commenting on another video in which a woman was complaining about domestic workers’ excessive use of TikTok on the Kuwaiti channel aloula.24.
“Ya Allah madam!!! You think khadama don’t have right using social media, because you are treating khadama like animals!!! we are human, we are workers not a slave, when we die God not separate madam and khadama!!!!”, jofaaw’s text on the video read.
The Filipina national is one of the countless foreign workers in Qatar who have found their voice on TikTok.
The Chinese short-form video app has quickly become the main medium of expression for the working class in the Persian Gulf nation, where migrant workers make up almost 90 percent of its population of nearly three million people.
Away from government control and public scrutiny, a TikTok user will see almost everything that shapes the life of an expatriate in Doha on the app. In short clips, one can encounter the good, the bad and the ugly, from happy success stories to angry labor protests.
In one video posted in May last year, a group of security workers are seen holding a strike over salary cuts.
Another video, taken in February, shows a man speaking in Hindi encouraging workers with the UrbaCon Trading & Contracting Company (UCC) to demand their rights. In the same month, laborers posted videos of them striking against the construction company.
According to local outlet Doha News, the protests were held after the company extended working hours for employees and removed the Friday day off so as to finish the World Cup projects “on time”.
The company said working overtime is offered and compensated “in accordance with the Labour law”.
In August, dozens of workers were deported after taking part in a rare protest for unpaid and delayed wages owed to them by another Doha-based firm, Al Bandary Engineering and Electrowatt Co.
Despite making strides in labor reforms ahead of the World Cup, set to start in Doha later this year, migrant workers in Qatar are still banned from joining trade unions and taking strike action.
Fearing dismissals and deportations, migrant workers rarely go on strike to protest against poor working conditions, unpaid and delayed wages, and threats of reduced salaries.