Tallene fra ministeriet for Udvikling, Planlægning og Statistik (MDPS) afslørede at 1,4 millioner mennesker lever i det som departementet officielt betegner som "arbejdslejre", rapporterede Daily Star.
På undersøgelsens tidspunkt var den officielle befolkning 2,4 millinoner og statistikken fandt at det overvejende flertal, 1,34 millioner var mænd. Qatars befolkning har dog sidenhen vokset til at være lidt over 2,5 millioner.
Indkvarteringen af indvandrerarbejderere som arbejder på Qatars talrige infrastrukturprojekter har længe været et omstridt emne.
Qatar, som vil være vært til fodbold VM i 2022, er blevet fordømt af menneskerettighedsgrupper, inklusiv Amnesty International, for at yde usel og trange logiforhold" for dets store arbejdsstyrke af indvandrere.
Last week, 11 people were killed and 12 injured when a fire ripped through a camp housing laborers working on a tourism project in the southwest of the country.
Qatar has responded to the criticism by building new workers' housing complexes, including the $825 million "Labor City" south of the capital Doha, which incorporates shops, cinemas and a cricket stadium.
The complex can house up to 70,000 foreign workers and is one of seven workers' "cities" being developed which will accommodate almost 260,000 people in total.
The population of gas-rich Qatar has soared over the past three decades as it has imported a huge migrant workforce to develop its infrastructure. In 1986, just 373,000 people lived in the emirate.
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