DOHA: The Central Municipal Council (CMC) expects a law to be issued in the near future restricting single workers from living in residential localities.

The CMC is banking hopes on a committee which the State Cabinet has set up to study the situation of single workers’ accommodations across the country.

The panel is likely to come out with comprehensive recommendations to deal with the problem.

In fact, a rough draft of a law that if implemented would restrict single workers from intermingling with families has been ready for a while but could not be acted upon as it was framed during the peak of the housing crisis.

Disclosing this, the CMC has clarified that professionals or educated single workers are to be excluded from the category of semi-skilled and unskilled workers who are housed in labor lodgings in residential localities.

Professionals and educated workers living here singly do not fall in the category of workers who need to be segregated from localities where families live, said Jassem Al Malki.

Al Malki who is deputy chairman of the CMC and also heads its services committee, said: “We have to work on the draft (of the proposed law).”

It was prepared right when there was an acute housing shortage, so it was put on the backburner,” he added in remarks to Al Sharq.

He said an effective way to make sure that companies do not have their labor camps in residential areas is that authorities should check housing arrangements for workers before issuing visas.

The visas should not be granted if the workers are to be put up in a camp located in a residential locality, he suggested.

However, according to a prominent lawyer, Rashid Al Nuaimi, since the rent law permits owners to rent out their properties to whoever they wish to, some of them give away houses to single workers.

The lawyer said some landlords gave away their villas located in residential areas and allowed these properties to be partitioned for subletting to single workers.

Talking of this, Fatima Al Kubaisi, who teaches sociology at Qatar University, said families living near such villas literally live in fear and men are scared to travel overseas leaving their near and dear ones behind for fear something untoward might happen.

“Not one or two but 50 to 60 single workers live in such villas, so the fear is natural,” she said. Although nothing untoward has happened so far, one would appreciate that the fear is not entirely baseless.