Major rights group slams Qatar for not investigating migrant workers’ deaths
Qatar must urgently introduce laws to protect the lives of up to 800,000 migrant construction labourers, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.
The report also called on Qatar, where thousands of labourers are working on 2022 football World Cup projects, to investigate workers’ deaths and make those findings public.
“The Qatari authorities’ failure to put in place the most basic protection from the heat, their decision to ignore recommendations that they investigate worker deaths, and their refusal to release data on these deaths, constitutes a wilful abdication of responsibility,” said report author Nicholas McGeehan.
He also called on football’s world governing body, Fifa, national associations and World Cup sponsors to demand further protection from heat and humidity for Qatar’s workers.
“They should also be demanding answers to two simple questions – how many workers have died since 2012 and how they have died?” he said.
Sarah Leah Whitson, regional executive director of the watchdog organisation, said: “Limiting work temperatures to safe levels, not set by a clock or calendar, is well within the capacity of the Qatari government and will help protect hundreds of thousands of workers.
Temperatures in Qatar are almost 40°C, with humidity above 50 per cent.
Human Rights Watch said medical research says heat stress is a genuine risk to those working outside, and it has called for greater flexibility by Qatari authorities.
It said Qatar last made figures available in 2012. That year, of the 520 deaths of Bangladeshi, Indian or Nepalese workers, 385 – or 74 per cent – were “neither explained nor investigated”.
The watchdog said there had been 10 deaths reported by World Cup organisers between October 2015 and July this year, eight of which were classified as “non-work related”.
The report comes after a Nepalese building worker in Qatar was sacked a day after speaking to a UN delegation visiting the country to examine labour conditions.
The UN’s International Labour Organisation said a possible investigation into claims of forced labour in Qatar would be on the agenda when its governing body met in two months.
“The ILO has been following closely this case and continues to do so with a view to ensuring that the rights of this Nepalese worker are fully respected and protected,” said Corinne Vargha, director of international labour standards.
The case was raised in a previous meeting of the organisation’s governing body in March, Ms Vargha said, in the context of a complaint against Doha for non-compliance with two ratified international conventions.
At the governing body’s meeting, the organisation may launch a formal investigation into Qatar over its treatment of migrant workers.
The sacked building worker’s plight has also been confirmed by two unions.
The incident occurred in March last year but could only now be reported because of sensitivities in the case.
It happened when six members from the organisation visited a Qatar labour camp.
After telling the UN body about unpaid wages and employers illegally holding his passport, the labourer was sacked and given a one-way ticket home to Nepal, unions said.
Officials at the International Trade Union Confederation say the timing of the dismissal “indicates it was a retaliatory act by his employer”.
“This is a breach under international labour standards and contradicts the commitments Qatar has repeatedly made before the ILO,” said the confederation’s chief, Sharan Burrow.
The union said the worker, 29, did not leave Qatar and was jailed for two weeks for outstaying his visa and faced a fine of 4,600 Qatari rials (Dh4,550).
Under the kafala system, all foreign workers in Qatar required a local sponsor to work and maintain residency. That sponsor, whether a person or company, must grant permission for the labourer to switch jobs or leave the country.
The Nepali was not working on a World Cup project.
The man’s case was cleared this year and he chose to stay in Qatar, working for a new employer for about 1,600 rials a month.
Qatar’s labour ministry said it was aware of the case and all issues had been resolved.
It insisted the case began when the worker left his job in breach of Qatar’s residency and employment laws.
Human Rights Watch wants Doha to investigate workers’ deaths and make those findings public