That is nothing compared from what I have learned from a couple of friends who got there working for two years.They were treated like slaves in the true meaning of the word,yes they give you a lot of money compared to where my friends live but the treatment is really really bad.Nevertheless they have come back here with some decent amount of money and don't intend to go back there anymore.
Qatar is one of the countries which has some Islamic laws,not the Sharia,not that extreme but not far from it either so yeah punishment like those are normal there.Sometimes we,people that live in western based rule of law take things for granted but they are not so we must fight for them to keep it the way we have them.
Salaries are not that high. A typical blue collar worker earns in the vicinity of $500 per month, for a job that requires you to work 12-hours a day, and 6 days per week. One advantage is that most of the GCC nations doesn't have income tax and the local currencies are pegged to the US Dollar. So when the national currencies in their homeland gets devalued, these guys profit out of it. Similar jobs can get paid by 5-6 times more in the western nations. But then, for poor people from South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and South-east Asia, jobs in the GCC region represents one of the few available avenues to escape from poverty.