I was zapped seeing the extravagance and splendor! 😲 USA will take a beating in 2026 after Qatar grandeur in 2022!
Qatar's construction frenzy ahead of the 2022 World Cup is on course to cost the lives of at least 4,000 migrant workers before a ball is kicked, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has claimed.
The group has been scrutinising builders' deaths in the Gulf emirate for the past two years and said that at least half a million extra workers from countries including Nepal, India and Sri Lanka are expected to flood in to complete stadiums, hotels and infrastructure in time for the World Cupkickoff.
The annual death toll among those working on building sites could rise to 600 a year almost a dozen a week unless the Doha government makes urgent reforms, it says.
While it admits that the cause of death is not clear for many of the deceased with autopsies often not being conducted and routine attribution to heart failure, it believes harsh and dangerous conditions at work and cramped and squalid living quarters are to blame.
The stark warning came after a Guardian investigation revealed that 44 Nepalese workers died from 4 June-8 August this year, about half from heart failure or workplace accidents. Nepalese migrants have died at a rate of one every two days in 2014 despite Qatar's promises to improve their working conditions. [The figure excludes deaths of Indian, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi workers, raising fears that if fatalities among all migrants were taken into account the toll would almost certainly be more than one a day.]
Workers described forced labour in 50C heat, employers who retain salaries for several months and passports making it impossible for them to leave and being denied free drinking water. The investigation found sickness is endemic among workers living in overcrowded and insanitary conditions and hunger has been reported. Thirty Nepalese construction workers took refuge in the their country's embassy and subsequently left the country, after they claimed they received no pay.
Without changes to working practices, more workers will die building the infrastructure in the runup to the World Cup.
It is estimated that Qatar, the world's richest country by income per capita, is spending the equivalent of 62bn from its gas and oil wealth on building transport infrastructure, hotels, stadiums and other facilities ahead of the World Cup. "Fifa needs to send a very strong and clear message to Qatar that it will not allow the World Cup to be delivered on the back of a system of modern slavery that is the reality for hundreds of thousands of migrant workers there today"
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