The Guardian of Britain is among those that have highlighted recently the appalling conditions and high death rate for migrant workers in Qatar. Among the shocking stats are Play Fair Qatar’s predictions that more than 62 workers will die for each game played during the 2022 tournament. That’s no price to pay for sport.
Attention on Qatar has been increasing this year, especially with stronger indications – in the whole FIFA debacle – that dirty deals may have been behind not just the upcoming Russia and Qatar competitions, but in earlier tournaments going back the 1990s.
The website Equal Times reported in February 2013 that injuries from falls by construction workers in Qatar had reached record highs – more than 1,000 workers a year - in the 2022 World Cup building boom. Most were migrant workers, who make up 99 per cent of the private sector workforce in Qatar. Ten per cent of those injured faced permanent disability.
Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), said Qatar was a “21st-century slave state”.
A Human Rights Watch World Report 2014 said migrants in Qatar continued “to experience serious rights violations, including forced labor and arbitrary restrictions on the right to leave Qatar, which expose them to exploitation and abuse by employers.”
Of Qatar’s population of 2 million, only 10 percent are Qatari nationals, and the number of economically active foreign nationals increased by 122,000 (about 10 percent), in the 12 months to April 2013.
Workers are subject to various restrictions by their employers.: “The kafala (sponsorship) system ties a migrant worker’s legal residence to his or her employer, or sponsor. Migrant workers commonly complain that employers fail to pay their wages on time if at all, ...”
They must also get an exit visa from their sponsor in order to leave. This may be refused arbitrarily, or their employer may accuse them of criminal or civil offences – leading to an indefinite travel ban. Even some highly-paid expatriates have found themselves trapped in Qatar in such a way – such as French professional footballer Zahir Belounis, and three former employees of the Al Jazeera Children’s Channel.
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