Qatar has a workforce of about 1.7mn, based on the population figures of November 2015, an expert on migration, ethics and human rights has said.

“While the population was 2.46mn in November 2015, it went up to 2.54mn by end of February this year, according to the data from the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics,” explained Dr Rajai Ray Jureidini.

The senior member of the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) was delivering a public lecture on ‘Limitations of Migrant Labour Reforms in Qatar’ on Wednesday.

The single largest community among the migrant workers is Indians, accounting for almost 31.7% (452,578) of the country’s labour force, as per November 2015 figures.

Nepalese (339,901 or 23.5%), Filipinos (165,447), Bangaldeshis (130,630) and Arab expatriates (146,577) are the other dominant workers groups. The figures do not include families and children from the expatriate communities mentioned above.

Among the Arab expatriate workers, 72,478 are Egyptian and 18,474 are Syrians. Sudanese (14,147) and Lebanese (10,200) are the other major Arab expatriate workers groups.

Nepalese community, which has large numbers of construction workers, is the single largest group of low income workers, the academic pointed out.

On the basis of the figures made available by the Nepalese embassy, there were 705 deaths in the community in the four years from 2011 to 2014. More than 53% of those deaths were from heart attack, and many were in the age group of 35-40.

More than 57% of the deaths from heart attack in the Nepalese community were between the months of April and September, when the region experiences summer conditions.

Of the 1.7mn expatriate workforce in the country, as many as 37% are engaged in the construction sector. Retail and wholesale sector (13%), household (10%), manufacturing (8%), mining and quarrying (6%) and public administration (6%) and administration and support services (3%) are the other major sectors of employment.

“It was also found that of all the GCC countries, Qatar has least number, 9.6%, of nationals on its territory,” Dr Jureidini added.