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Article

21 Feb 2019

Author:
Jill Wells, Engineers Against Poverty (UK)

Blog: Engineers Against Poverty looks at the role of govts and clients in addressing late payment in construction

[L]engthy contractual chains...facilitate payment abuse. Money withheld at the upper reaches of the contractual supply chain causes serious problems for participants further down...who suffer the longest delays and are the least able to mitigate their impact...A recent survey of contractors in the UAE and Qatar by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre has revealed that up to 80% of the labour on some projects may be employed by subcontractors or labour supply companies.

A consensus has been growing among national lawmakers that payment abuse in the construction industry has reached a point where the damage is so severe that the construction industry can no longer be left to regulate itself. Laws are needed, imposing rules on the abusive elements in the industry...In the absence of government action there is still much that clients can do to ensure prompt payment along the subcontracting chain, so that the problems created by late payment can be averted and their projects can be delivered on time...In the GCC several major clients have developed their own worker welfare standards that stress that workers must be paid on time.