The Guardian (USA)

Qatar facing renewed calls to compensate migrant workers over uninvestig­ated deaths

- Geneva Abdul

Qatar is facing renewed calls from migrant workers, their families, and rights groups to compensate for human rights abuses including wage theft, injuries and uninvestig­ated deaths, days before the World Cup kicks off.

As fans and footballer­s descend on the Persian Gulf country for the month-long tournament, workers and their families, who have spent 12 years sounding the alarm on exploitati­ve conditions endured while building the tournament’s infrastruc­ture, are seeking an amount equivalent to the $440m (£372m) World Cup prize money for a remediatio­n programme.

Qatar’s labour minister, Ali bin Samikh al-Marri, has previously rejected such proposals, telling the news agency AFP that there was “no criteria to establish these funds”.

Faced with scorching temperatur­es and a lack of labour protection­s, thousands of workers from Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and elsewhere have died in the host country since the World Cup was awarded 10 years ago.

While the official number of workrelate­d deaths during preparatio­ns for the $220bn project is three, according to the Qataris and Gianni Infantino, Fifa’s president, the exact number of migrant workers who have died as a result of negligence remains unknown.

“Many migrant workers, their families and communitie­s are not able to fully celebrate what they have built, and are calling on Fifa and Qatar to remedy abuses of workers that have left families and communitie­s destitute and struggling,” said Rothna Begum, a senior researcher in women’s and migrant rights at Human Rights Watch.

The unsettling human cost of the tournament is acute for workers such as Ram Pukar Sahani, who left Nepal for Qatar with his father, Ganga Sahani, in 2017, to earn money to repay family debts.

In May Ram, who had returned home to get married, received a call from Qatar saying that his father, believed to have been healthy, had died while working.

Ram recalled conversati­ons with his father in which he would complain about his work and said Ram’s job, where he was able to escape to air conditioni­ng and had time to rest, was better.

When Ganga’s body was returned to Nepal, along with his 9,000 Qatari riyal salary and bonus (£2,000) , no further action or compensati­on came from the company. His father’s death, he said, was attributed to natural causes.

“They are making this a huge event, but I lost my father,” Ram said through a translator on Thursday.

“There is no debt now, but it took my father’s life to pay back that debt,” he said. While the family received insurance money and support from the Nepali government, it wasn’t enough, he added.

Ganga’s death is one of many migrant workers in the past decade that Qatar has failed to investigat­e, according to an Amnesty Internatio­nal 2021 report that says most migrant worker deaths in Qatar are attributed to “natural causes”, or cardiac or respirator­y failure.

In May, Human Rights Watch and other non-government­al organisati­ons wrote a joint open letter to Fifa’s president, calling on the sports body and Qatari authoritie­s to remedy past labour abuses and to compensate workers and their families.

Earlier this month, 10 European footballin­g nations demanded that Fifa deliver a permanent workers’ rights centre in Qatar and a compensati­on fund for migrant workers and their families. On Sunday, Amnesty Internatio­nal’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, made an urgent plea for compensati­on to help families rebuild their lives.

To quell mounting criticism, sweeping labour reforms were introduced in 2019, which included ending kafala, the system that made it illegal for migrant workers to change jobs or leave the country without their employer’s permission. Other reforms included the first minimum wage for migrant workers in the region and harsher penalties for companies that did not comply with the new laws.

“This is because of our blood and sweat,” said Ram of the tournament, which starts in three days. “Look at us, see our conditions, because there are so many people who have made a huge contributi­on, even losing their life, to make Qatar’s World Cup possible.”

The Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee was approached for comment.

 ?? Qatar’s World Cup facilities. Photograph: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images ?? Thousands of workers from Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and elsewhere are believed to have died during constructi­on work of
Qatar’s World Cup facilities. Photograph: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images Thousands of workers from Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and elsewhere are believed to have died during constructi­on work of

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