Page 193 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

190 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

revenues since October 1973 than to any remarkable access of benevolence on
the part of the Al Thani. The principal beneficiaries of these revenues have
been the Al Thani themselves and the merchant community of Dauhah, many
members of which have accumulated large fortunes. Yet the benefits have also
seeped down through the layers of Qatari society to the lowest levels, where the

illiterate Bedouin and fishermen have had jobs created for them in the state
bureaucracy. The total population of Qatar is, at most, around 130,000,
although it has been placed at a much higher figure, between 200,000 and
250,000, by the Qatari government and by Western publicists anxious to cater
to Qatari self-esteem. Native Qataris probably number no more than 50,000, of
whom perhaps half are adults of working age. The central administration of the

shaikhdom alone employs some 18,000 people, the higher ranks, where tech­
nical or professional qualifications are required, being filled mostly by Palesti­
nians, Egyptians and other emigre Arabs. Little wonder that the director of the
civil service was reported in September 1977 as saying, ‘If I were to check at
this moment, perhaps only a quarter of those staff would be usefully

employed.’
The real work in Qatar, particularly at the lower levels, is done by the
immigrants. Pakistanis and Indians, with the former predominant, make up
the artisan class, the small shopkeepers and over a third of the labour force. Of
the nearly 25,000 Pakistani labourers, half are Pathans, who have a reputation
for being strong and hard-working. Roughly another third of the labour force

is composed of Persians and Baluchis, while the remainder, again somewhere
in excess of 20,000, are Omanis, Dhufaris, Yemenis and Hadramis. None of
these labourers, skilled or unskilled, is paid on the scale of the Qatari workers-
or non-workers - though all have had to endure the consequences of a grossly
inflated cost of living in recent years. Were it not for the dire poverty in their

home countries which led them to find work in Qatar in the first place, it would
hardly be worth their while to stay there. Northern Arabs - Palestinians,
Egyptians and others — who are employed in professional, technical, teaching
and clerical posts, some 5,000 or more in all, are paid better, though they, too,
have felt the pinch of rising prices.
Oil production, the basis of Qatar’s prosperity, has declined of late years,

and is now pegged at half-a-million barrels per day. Revenues, however, have
increased, running at about $2,000 million per annum in 1975 an<^ I97^-1
reckoned that at the present rate of production the reserves have a future e 0

perhaps thirty years, mostly in the offshore fields from which 7° Per cent 0
present production is obtained. There are, however, large reserves o na*ura
gas, again mainly in offshore fields, which may have a life in them o a un

years at the rate of production that is at present projected. The two pnncipa
concessionaires, the Qatar Petroleum Company, a subsidiary of I > an
Shell Company of Qatar, have both been nationalized, the ^atar!?°V^r"ent jn

having taken a 25 per cent share in the two companies in I973> P